It may not be just an idle threat. The world's top search engine, Google, may well be leaving China for good. Last week, the company says it could no longer abide by the censorship rules it promised to obey when GOOGLE-DOT-CN was launched just four years ago.
Within hours of the announcement, Google appeared to be defying Chinese censors, displaying results for sensitive topics that were previously banned in China. Flowers have been laid outside Google's Beijing offices in a mock funeral for the company.
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Google is still awaiting a decision from the Chinese government which will decide the scope of its future operations in China. It has already stopped automatically redirecting Chinese online users to its Hong Kong site in an attempt to renew its license for Google.cn.
David Drummond, Google's chief legal officer said the Chinese government told Google the re-routing was “unacceptable” and it would not renew its Internet Content Provider (ICP) license if it continued.
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