Beijing (ip-192.com): Google seems to be on the frontline in China. After drawing much anticipated critic from the communist government for stopping to censor search results, businesses start to part with the search engine giant. China Unicom, the second largest mobile carrier in China, stopped using Google search on phones that run Google’s mobile Android operating system. An announcement from Motorola followed saying that it has dropped the Internet companies search engine from one of its Android smart phones in China.
Google meanwhile hardened its stance on liberty and uncensored content. "Over time, we will not be syndicating censored search to partners in China. But we will of course fulfill our existing contractual obligations," a Google spokeswoman in Singapore told Reuters.
Goggle started to shut down censored search content run through Google China on March 22. Instead, the company redirected users to its unfiltered feed in Hong Kong. Chinese reaction has been swift: Authorities are already filtering "sensitive" results from Google’s Hong Kong search engine for mainland users.
The search portal tom.com, owned by Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-Shing, has removed Google’s search service completely. Since all Internet service providers in China require a license that needs to be renewed through the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, more fallout seems likely.
The risk of reprisal has not kept other companies from following Google. Go Daddy, an internet domain registrar, said that it will start to scale back its operations and stop registering domain names in China because of new regulations imposed by the government.
[...] started to redirect users from its mainland China search engine to Hong Kong (ip-192.com reported here). While part of China, the former British Colony enjoys freedoms unknown in the rest of the [...]