Google today said that it is re-routing access to Google.cn to Google.com.hk, where the company provides uncensored search results. While the site of Google.cn is effectively shut down at this time, Google says it will keep a presence in China and is taking precautionary rhetoric steps to protect its employees in China.

Google was under growing pressure to come to a business decision in China. Earlier today, its chief legal officer David Drummond said that Google “stopped censoring [its] search services—Google Search, Google News, and Google Images—on Google.cn.”

“Users visiting Google.cn are now being redirected to Google.com.hk, where we are offering uncensored search in simplified Chinese, specifically designed for users in mainland China and delivered via our servers in Hong Kong,” Drummond explained.

“Users in Hong Kong will continue to receive their existing uncensored, traditional Chinese service, also from Google.com.hk.”
Google’s move is the most decisive action in an ongoing censoring dispute yet. In January, the company disclosed information on a massive cyber attack from China on its corporate infrastructure “that resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google.”

The company also noted that that “the Gmail accounts of dozens of human rights activists connected with China were being routinely accessed by third parties, most likely via phishing scams or malware placed on their computers.”

“We also made clear that these attacks and the surveillance they uncovered—combined with attempts over the last year to further limit free speech on the web in China including the persistent blocking of websites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google Docs and Blogger — had led us to conclude that we could no longer continue censoring our results on Google.cn.,” Drummond wrote on the Google blog. Google said it will be “carefully” monitoring “access issues”. The company provides a website that lists available, blocked and partially blocked services.

According to Drummond, Google will continue its “R&D work in China and also to maintain a sales presence there, though the size of the sales team will obviously be partially dependent on the ability of mainland Chinese users to access Google.com.hk.”

Quite apparently, Google isn’t quite sure how the Chinese government will react to the shutdown of Google.cn and the re-routing to Hongkong. In an attempt to take Google employees in China out of the line of fire, Drummodn said “that all these decisions have been driven and implemented by our executives in the United States, and that none of our employees in China can, or should, be held responsible for them.”

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