Checking the twitter trending topics this morning, I noticed that Google had worked its way there. Wondering what Google could have possibly did to gain this place, I curiously clicked the link expecting to see a new product launch or updated version of Chrome. To my surprise, it was an announcement saying that Google would be removing the filters on their search results in China.

While the blog post was rather cryptic, my understanding of it is that the Chinese government attempted to gain access to the Gmail accounts of Human right activists. While initially passing it off as a mere security incident, Google later found out that the same sort of attack was also conducted on a number of other businesses.

If you do a Google Image search for the image on the right in China, you won’t see any results for it. When Google China launched in 2006, it was met with criticism for filtering search results at the mercy of the Chinese government. Some claimed that this went against their unofficial motto of do no evil whereas others claimed it was doing the right thing by allowing people access to another search engine in China.

Today, Google America announced that they would no longer filter results in China, even if it means closing their offices in China. I was quite surprised at this move as it meant that they were willing to risk their entire Chinese market at the expense of freedom of speech. Being the internet, it is quite easy for Chinese citizens to visit Google.com, but this potentially means that the Chinese government could block the entire Google domain.

I should also point out that Badiu is currently China’s biggest search engine, with Google coming second to it on a 29% market share. This move could be considered similar to Bing pulling out of the US. This point doesn’t mean anything though, and the only message that it does send is a clear one. Censorship is wrong, and it shouldn’t happen.

After seeing this move, I only hope that Google becomes more vocal about censorship in general, especially in Australia, as we face a similar issue. While currently not implemented, our communications minister, Stephen Conroy wants to implement mandatory ISP-Level filtering to filter out all Restricted Content material. Such a move would essentially put us in the same category of Iraq and China and creates a very slippery slope for future governments to abuse. I just hope that Google can remain in Australia for years to come and is not pressured out of it by our crazy government.

I will also be interested in Bing’s response to this, as they too filter results in China.