Reporters Without Borders has observed the Google.com address can no longer be accessed from China. Chinese Googlites can visit the local version of the search engine at Google.cn, but the main, and uncensored, home of Google has vanished.
Likewise, Google News and Google Mail have been blocked as well.
“It was only to be expected that Google.com would be gradually sidelined after the censored version was launched in January,” Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said. “Google has just definitively joined the club of western companies that comply with online censorship in China. It is deplorable that Chinese Internet users are forced to wage a technological war against censorship in order to access banned content.”
Those technology workarounds come in the form of software that had been able to work its way through China’s “Great Firewall,” but efforts at blocking software like Dynapass and Freegate appear to be succeeding, RSF said.
Without direct or indirect access to Google, China’s Internet users would have to use the localized, censored version instead if they wish to go Googling for information.
The report emerged from RSF not long before Google co-founder Sergey Brin said Google thought it could compromise its principles while being more useful to users in China. A Mercury Post report carried more of Brin’s thoughts on China:
“It’s perfectly reasonable to do something different, to say, ‘Look, we’re going to stand by the principle against censorship and we won’t actually operate there.’ That’s an alternate path,” Brin said. “It’s not where we chose to go right now, but I can sort of see how people came to different conclusions about doing the right thing.”
—
Add to 
Bookmark Murdok: 
David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.