Google's big move
All those weeks of talks finally came to a head early this morning, as Google stopped censoring its search results in China. Instead of google.cn, users are being directed to an uncensored version of google.com.hk in simplified Chinese. On the company's official blog, Google’s Senior Vice President David Drummond says that routing through Hong Kong is a legal move, although the Chinese government can still block access to the site. By doing so, Google can continue to offer its search engine to Chinese users outside the jurisdiction of mainland Chinese law, a move the WSJ quotes a source as saying seems to be an “elegant solution if it were to hold,” but China will most likely not allow it to continue.
But we learned all about that in the wee hours of the morning. In the day that's followed, the world over has exploded with opinions and commentary - almost as much as when Google first announced it was pulling out of the country.
Reaction from the Chinese government has been swift and uncompromising. Google has "violated its written promise" and has made ";unreasonable accusations," Xinhua quotes a government official as saying. On the U.S. side, Washington released a statement saying it was "disappointed" that Google could not reach an agreement with Beijing although it respected its decision. The administration is “committed to Internet freedom and … opposed to censorship. While we seek to expand cooperation on issues of mutual interest with China, we will candidly and frankly address areas of disagreement,” said National Security Council spokesman Mike Hammer.
On-line dating is already one of the most 
Just as the rest of the world is getting swept away in a social networking frenzy, googling for keywords such as "Badoo", "Facebook", "Ebuddy", "Hi5" and even "Second Life", Chinese googlers it seems are a completely different species. In 2007, four out of the top ten keywords among Chinese googlers were wealth-related, searching for keywords such as "stock", "China Merchants Bank", "Industrial and Commercial Bank of China" and "China Construction Bank". Bank of China is conspicuously absent from the list! 
The Internet has revolutionized the way that millions in China communicate with the outside world. But for some Chinese teenagers the thrill of using the Internet came with a high price: addiction. 
Last week, 
China's Internet economy is booming. Last year, Internet gaming revenue grew by 73 percent to 654.6 Billon RMB. (
Most news services concentrate, when it comes to search engines, on Google. But in China, soon to be the largest Internet market in the world, Google does not really rate. The company to watch is Baidu which is booming.Chinese Web search leader Baidu says its fourth-quarter net profits quintupled, but cautioned that revenue growth was likely to decelerate sharply in the first quarter of 2007. To look at a statement like that you can easily pass over that word ‘quintupled’. As in it became five times bigger. Not even Google in its best quarter came near that.
