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The mighty GOOG announced this morning that it will be redirecting Chinese search visitors from Google.cn to Google.com.hk - which sits safely outside the Great (Fire) Wall of China - in response to the widely-reported cyber attack on Google in December.

Although Google users will be redirected for web, news and image search to the Hong Kong site, which will now show simplified Chinese in addition to traditional Chinese and English results, it's likely that Google.com.hk will be blocked at least as aggressively as Google.com was if not more.

Uncensoring may have broader ramifications. In addition to the obvious PR benefits for Google of looking good to it's user base as unbiased source of information, it's been proposed that Google's decision could help future companies make headway on the censorship issue, as the Chinese government won't ant to risk future public embarrassment with a US company.

But put down that freedom fist, there's still money on the table of the planet's most populous market. Google’s music search and maps products will remain live, says the company. And Google will "retain research and development and sales teams in China."

Google holds a mere 20% in the Chinese market share, the majority stakeholder here being Baidu (my sources tell me that the panda pawprint logo was the driving force skyrocketing this Chinese search engine to the top), who's stock is up about 50 percent since Google first warned that it might pull out of the China.

In honor of today's news, I am officially ordering an extra freedom fortune cookie for dessert with my lunch. Crunch on that, Communism!

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/new-approach-to-china-update.html

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-03-23/google-faces-no-hong-kong-censors-after-china-retreat.html