Google v. China: Shit just got real

It's a new day today. How can I tell? We've finally moved away from socialism to communism being the story of the day. Google has effectively pulled up stakes in China, moving its offices and redirecting its Google.cn domain to... another part of China. Hong Kong more specifically. Yes, Google finally got tired of China stealing their proprietary software spying, hacking, and censoring... beyond the parameters of the spying, hacking, and censoring they allowed the Chinese government to do through Google as part of their original deal. It's about the principle of the thing. If China can't hold to the agreed upon principles of dishonesty, then Google just can't trust them.

But now, with the move to Hong Kong and the domain forwarding, Google is effectively uncensored in China.... for about 15 more minutes until they revoke the domain name. They're kind of pissed. In that "trying to pretend we aren't pissed, saying nice things through a grimace and gritted teeth while holding a gun" communist way.

A bulletin from China's state-run news outlet Xinhua blasted Google in a post titled "China says Google breaks promise, totally wrong to stop censoring."
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"This is totally wrong. We're uncompromisingly opposed to the politicization of commercial issues, and express our discontent and indignation to Google for its unreasonable accusations and conducts," an official with the Internet bureau of the State Council Information Office, China's Cabinet, was quoted as saying by the official Xinhua News Agency.

An op-ed by Xinhua published on the CCTV website accused Google of "groundlessly accusing the Chinese government of supporting hacker attack [sic]" and warned Google that it "should not continue to politicalize itself." The article continues,

"Regrettably, Google's recent behaviors show that the company not just aims at expanding business in China, but is playing an active role in exporting culture, value and ideas. It is unfair for Google to impose its own value and yardsticks on Internet regulation to China, which has its own time-honored tradition, culture and value."

Yes, Google is violating that time honored Chinese cultural principle of total government censorship. But judging by the tone of the Chinese statements, they have hired a 14 year-old American girl to write their press releases. We're one more 'totally' and an 'OMG' away from audibly being able to hear the sound of someone loudly chewing gum while they banged this release out on their Sidekick.

Google in China is not actually totally uncensored now, it's just that they've abdicated their self-censorship duties to the Chinese government, who, because of the move to Hong Kong, can only censor Google by completely shutting the search engine down. Which is exactly what Google wants so they can claim the moral high ground. They also technically get a PR victory in China because by forwarding the domain to Google.hk they technically haven't violated the deal to stop censoring Google.cn, which I'm sure will be explained in great detail to the people of China from the Chinese news services.

As of today, through Google.hk, Chinese people can search about Tienanmen Square. And porn. And internet gambling. One of those speaks to the true freedom of the internet, but I'm not sure which one.

So as the Chinese government and Google do battle on the largest stage in the most passive aggressive fight in human history, the Chinese people are caught in the middle of mommy and daddy fighting. And in the end, they probably won't end up better off because of it. But Google does get to make a stand over not allowing China to further their intellectual property theft and save face at a failing operation... I mean make a stand over censorship. I don't even know why I wrote the first half of that sentence. This is about free speech. Totally.