As expected, the Chinese have responded to Google moving to using the Google Hong Kong search engine for China. According to The New York Times, the Chinese government has whipped the Great Firewall into action so that search results can be filtered. Not that anyone expected anything otherwise.
Oh yeah, I should also note that the Chinese are also really pissed off at Google:
The government denounced Google on Tuesday, calling its decision “totally wrong,” and the state-run news media accused Google of politicizing the Internet by trying to foist Western content on Chinese users.
Charming. There’s more:
China’s biggest cellular communications company, China Mobile, was expected to cancel a deal that had placed Google’s search engine on its mobile Internet home page, used by millions of people daily. In interviews, business executives close to industry officials said the company was planning to scrap the deal under government pressure, despite the fact that China Mobile has yet to contract with a replacement.
Similarly, China’s second-largest mobile company, China Unicom, was said by analysts and others to have delayed or killed the imminent introduction of a cellphone based on Google’s Android platform. One major Internet portal, Tom.com, already had ceased using Google to power its search engine.
I guess the next move is Google’s. Any bets on what that might be?