Google has stopped censoring its search results in China, ignoring warnings by the country’s authorities.
The US company said its Chinese users would be redirected to the uncensored pages of its Hong Kong website.
In January, Google had complained about a “sophisticated cyber attack originating from China”.
China has criticised the move, while the White House said it was dismayed that Google and China had not been able to resolve their differences.
The US National Security spokesman, Mike Hammer, said: “We are disappointed that Google and the Chinese government were unable to reach an agreement that would allow Google to continue operating its search services in China on its Google.cn website.”
China’s official Xinhua news agency said Google had violated a “written promise” and was “totally wrong” to end censorship of its Chinese-language search portal Google.cn.
Chinese government officials had warned Google repeatedly that it would face consequences if it did not comply with the country’s censorship rules.
In a blog post, the company said the Chinese government had been “crystal clear throughout our discussions that self-censorship is a non-negotiable legal requirement”.
Google’s chief legal officer, David Drummond, said that providing “uncensored search” from Google.com.hk was “a sensible solution to the challenges we’ve faced—it’s entirely legal and will meaningfully increase access to information for people in China”.
It said there might be some service slowdowns and delays in getting search results while it beefs up resources to handle the re-directed queries.
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Article courtesy bbc.co.uk