Exit Google, Stage China

Google's China office isn't really this empty. There are still people there doing R&D and selling ads. For now, anyway.

Not unexpectedly, Google followed through on its threat to uncensor its Chinese search engine today, though in an interesting way. Instead of just opening up google.cn, they redirected the site to google.co.hk, their Hong Kong site, which now offers searches tweaked for mainland China in simplified Chinese.

Google apparently thinks that since the new searches will technically be conducted in Hong Kong, the Chinese government will be cool with this arrangement. Based this only-slightly-incomprehensible statement from state-run China Central Television, though, they’re not, which means at any minute, Chinese Google could be no more.

Sometimes, this Internet is a little more fragile than we think.