According to Google's official blog(blogspot), Google is now finding a new approach in China. It's bored of censoring the Internet all day long, and being punished at CCTV and other "mainstream" media of China. So Google wants to leave China, this place in harmony.
I don't want to retell the reactions of other people that happened recently, of "Giving flowers illegally", "Google should learn from Baidu", "Google's real man" and so on. I want to say about my own thought about this.
You can call me a fan of Google, maybe. From searching to GMail to GTalk to Google Docs/Calendar to this blog on Google App Engine. I enjoy the service from Google very much. But in fact, I don't use google.cn, or, "Google China" often, except listening to some music on www.g.cn/music. So what should I worry about?
What makes me most upset is that, if Google cancels out the office in China, the GFW can block google.com forever, with adequate excuse. It will say that "Google is an illegal company". Then all services at google.com, especially GMail, will be completely unusable. All e-mail SP won't be able to send emails from China to GMail. This is terrible for us heavily GMail users.
If Google leaves China, the Internet censorship will be much more strict than now. Not only the government, but also many people thinks that Internet censorship is right and they don't care about privacy. This perhaps is because the Internet is not well developed in China. Recently, a person here has been arrested just because sending porn joke SMSs to friends. This means that all the SMS are monitered at any time and we just don't have any privacy. In the future, a lot of communications will be done online or on the phone, so monitering your online activity is almost the same as having a camera installed on your head.
You can Google for "19842015" for the Chinese novel, before google.com is blocked. Also, hurry up to backup your GMail emails, and wish the blockup won't happen.
P.S. I, oldherl, wrote this entry, in English.