I’m looking forward to a day of watching the fallout from the Google-China-HK announcement yesterday. I give Google an enormous amount of credit for the approach that they are taking; it’s a worthy effort to meet what they consider their human rights obligations while seeking to engage in the China market, both of which are laudable. I’ll be surprised, though, if the Chinese government doesn’t decide fairly promptly to block the redirects from Google.cn to the uncensored Hong Kong site, though.  This chess-game also demonstrates the importance of (and challenges inherent in) the work of the Global Network Initiative, of which Google is a member, along with Microsoft and Yahoo!

(For more info: See generally the OpenNet Initiative site, blog, research papers, and so forth online.  There’s also a chapter on this issue, written by our colleague Colin Maclay, in the forthcoming OpenNet Initiative book called Access Controlled, due out within the month from MIT Press, as there is in our previous book, Access Denied, available online.  Here’s a piece in which I make a cameo on CNN on Google and China, one of many video-clips on this topic.  And Rebecca MacKinnon’s blog is always informative on these topics.)