This morning, I woke up to find that the impossible had finally happened. As I lay peacefully sleeping last night, Google finally put into action what it had been blabbing about for months – it took away Google.cn. That’s right, the Chinese Google platform is no more. In its place you can now find the Hong Kong Google site – google.com.hk – with the friendly message “欢迎您来到谷歌搜索在中国的新家” or “Welcome to the new home of Google Search in China.” One big step for Google. Small difference for Betsy’s daily Internet routine. Sure, if you now search for something illicit in the new Google (take for example, Tiananmen), you can receive legit search results instead of the dreaded “The connection has timed out” page. But if you click on any of the search results, still a no go. It was interesting to inform my fellow Chinese colleagues of this news this morning. They immediately huddled around a computer and proceeded to search Google for an hour. What previously censored information were they dying to look up? Not exactly sure… but at least now they can find some good search results for it.
One good thing to know is that China’s Google Music platform is still in tact. For those not in the know back home, Google has a special music site in China where you can download most popular music for free. While lesser-known indie music isn’t widely available, that means I’ve been able to shamelessly download as much Beyonce and Taylor Swift as I want. Gracias China!
We’ll wait for the Chinese government’s countermove now. Not sure what’s gonna happen, but you may soon be receiving emails from my new Hotmail address. Yuck.
Can’t read this in China, but you can find Google’s new China approach here.
