Internet giant Google announced it would shut down its mainland China search engine rather than continue to censor user searches as demanded by Chinese authorities.Mainland Chinese Google users now will automatically be redirected to the company's uncensored version in Hong Kong. Google supporters and free-speech advocates hailed the news as a historic moment for freedom of expression inside China. But government authorities in Beijing lashed out and condemned the move, clearly fearful it could stand as an example to other foreign companies frustrated by China's ever-increasing controls on commerce and information exchange inside the country. Google has violated the written promise it made on entering the Chinese market, the Sino spokesperson said. It is totally wrong in halting its filtering (censorship) of its search engine.
