Asia Pacific

“As of this writing, numerous major American and European news outlets are reporting that Google is blocked in China, based on the information appearing on Google’s Mainland China service availability page.

However no journalist has actually confirmed with a human being at Google that this information is correct. What’s more, I’ve heard from several dozen people all over China who say that Google isn’t blocked for them when they access it on their Internet connections from Beijing to Shanghai to Sichuan to Hunan.

I have yet to hear from a single person who can’t access Google search in Mainland China. I am collecting people’s responses via Twitter here. Also see the #googlecn tag. For a sampling see here, here, here, here, and here.

The most insane part of this whole non-story is that Google’s stock fell 1.4 percent and Baidu’s stock rose 3.5 percent. What’s even funnier are all the financial analysts who commented to Reuters about the block…funny that is if you don’t own Google stock…”

From RConversation

Google’s announcement Tuesday that it might pull out of the Chinese market has cast a sharp focus on long-standing accusations about the shadowy world of Chinese hackers. Since at least 2002, human rights activists have accused the Chinese government and military of infiltrating their computers as well as those maintained by private companies and nongovernmental […]

Google’s fight with Chinese censors risks escalating into a fullblown US-China showdown over cyber warfare, as claims emerge about the unprecedented scale of Chinese attacks on US commercial and defence systems. The Chinese-originated attack on Gmail accounts of human rights activists, which Google said had partly prompted its threat to leave China, was “probably insignificant” […]

By refusing to accept China’s censorship for its Internet search engine, Google has sent a message to the authoritarian state and its 300 million Internet users. The hidden cost of doing business may be to sell out the values on which the business depends. It took courage for Google to refuse to pay that price and take on China so publicly, by threatening to pull out if limits on the search engine persist.

Well-known human rights advocates in China and a Tibetan rights activist in the United States have disclosed that their Gmail accounts have been compromised. They came forward after Google’s announcement of a sustained cyber attack on activists and other illicit accessing of accounts, but stressed that the problem goes back much further. Some in China […]

Nart Villeneuve spoke about Google’s new approach in China with Jian Ghomeshi on CBC’s Q on January 14, 2010. Download the postcast here at CBC

Although Google’s decision is commendable, it is unlikely to have any major implications on China’s extensive filtering practices. Although Green Dam demonstrated that China is somewhat receptive to criticism, the implications of filtering search results are not the same as filtering sites: A user searching on Google.cn may be able to see a site in […]

The decision by Google to draw a line and threaten to end its business operations in China brought attention to reports of Chinese high-technology espionage stretching back at least a decade. But despite Google’s suggestion that the hacking came from within China, it remained unclear who was responsible. Nevertheless, it presented the Obama administration with […]

By refusing to accept China’s censorship for its Internet search engine, Google has sent a message to the authoritarian state and its 300 million Internet users. The hidden cost of doing business may be to sell out the values on which the business depends. It took courage for Google to refuse to pay that price […]