As everyone has no doubt noticed by now, Google switched off its mainland site around 3am this morning (Tuesday, March 23), and is now redirecting all traffic to Google.com.hk. At this stage it appears even Google.com is being redirected to the Hong Kong site.
Google’s official statement is blocked, but it has been reproduced here.
The Guardian has provided a timeline of last night’s events and a summary of the disputes leading up to today’s move.
You can about read the official Chinese government response here, and the Global Times coverage here. The GT piece is rather amusingly headlined: "Google breaks promise, totally wrong to stop censoring." China Daily has a small piece repeating the same line here.
The question now is what this means for other Google services. If you use gmail you might want to invest in that VPN you’ve been thinking about.
Photo from the Guardian.
