It's been a rocky dating relationship. In early 2006, China agreed to censor its search results, but decided it would message that the results are censored - a demonstration that they did not agree with the policy. According to yesterday's blog author, who spoke on NPR today, they felt that their presence in the company would cotnribute to overall progress, and that eventually these silly rules would go away.
However, the couple got in a very big fight in December, the equivalent of tearing through all the bills, emails, and personal accounts: a cyberattack that looked suspiciously like the Chinese government digging up details on human rights activists. Ironically, the news couldn't be found on China's current top search engine, Baidu, today.
And now we come to the part that reminded me to put a 'my views are not the views of my company' on this blog: I think this is an excellent decision. It's ethical, even if it doesn't represent a highest revenue choice that clearly was reflected in the stock trading today (Google down, Baidu up). While it's much more likely that China will listen to a corporation than another government, it seems unlikely they will stand for this embarassment. But in my mind, and in the minds of hundreds of Chinese fans who put flowers in front of the Google China office today, it's one of the best things I've seen a company do for brand admiration.
When I worked for the Tibetan government-in-exile, you would see people arrive across the board and see how handing over an email address can result in grave harm. That's not something to be weighed against revenue potential.
Official Google blog post: "A new approach to China"
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