Mon Mar 22, 2010 5:51pm EDT
By Alexei Oreskovic
SAN FRANCISCO, March 22 (Reuters) - Google Inc moved its China Internet search service to Hong Kong in a bid to resolve its dispute with Beijing over censored search results while keeping a foot in the world's largest Internet market.
But comments on Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency, suggested that Google's attempt to strike a balance may not go over well with Beijing. Xinhua quoted a government official as saying Google has "violated its written promise" and is "totally wrong" by stopping censorship of its Chinese language search results.
Google said on Monday it intends to continue research and development work in China, as well as maintain a sales staff, even as it effectively stopped serving search results from its mainland Chinese site Google.cn and redirected traffic to an unfiltered search site in Hong Kong.
For the average mainland Chinese Web surfer, the change is unlikely to make much difference unless they can get around government-imposed firewalls (yes, there are ways to do so) that block searches for sensitive topics like the Dalai Lama.
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