http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/the_web/article7068216.ece

"Google could pull out of China as early as April 10, a Chinese newspaper [China Business News] reported today quoting an authorised agent for the search engine. "

If this is true – I doubt of it – Google will announce it next Monday.

‘Google is Greater than God’. But for the godless Chinese, Google is just a search engine. ;-)

they did take it down:

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

What on earth...?

There's something more going on here than meets the eye, considering that Hong Kong is part of China. Why not serve uncensored results in Chinese from servers in the US or somewhere else, instead of from servers in Hong Kong?

There has to be a subplot here that we haven't understood yet.

http://www.google.com/prc/report.html#hl=en

What a fail from Google...
Google Hong Kong will be censored in China in 5...4...3...

TOMHTML:
Google is not stupid. They must have considered this. Maybe there was a backroom agreement about this with the Chinese authorities, or maybe this is just the first phase because it could be implemented quickly. Google has a lot more Chinese-speaking employees in Hong Kong than in California.

http://www.businessinsider.com/google-dont-politicalize-yourself-2010-3?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+typepad%2Falleyinsider%2Fsilicon_alley_insider+%28Silicon+Alley+Insider%29

>>this press release is from Xinhua, China's state news agency<<

Wow, thank you @Grega, I've never seen a such un-objective press release in my entire life. Never.

Roger I'm not sure there is any agreement. What China would lose from Google's quit? No so much after all...

TOMHTML

Also see http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/22/china-google-xinhua/

<<Xinhua, which is the official press of the People’s Republic of China, has a story about the redirect on its site. The 39-word story (the English version, anyway) offers nothing beyond some very basic, limited information.>>

And then it turns out to be all an early april's fools joke :-).

There is an interesting update to this article:
"Here’s a bit more from Xinhua, complete with the headline, “Indifference, uncertainty cloud Google’s China threat.” In it, it’s reported that 84% of over 27,000 citizens said they “don’t care” about Google potentially pulling out of China."

The statistic may not be useful if taken at face value*, though it may be interesting in terms of analyzing the communication strategy of the Chinese authorities.

*conducted from a single website (huanqiu.com); reported by a conflicted source (state news agency Xinhua); potentially skewable in choice of question, answers, and answer order (anyone saw the poll?); seemingly unrelated to real issue (article talks about Google pulling out, whereas right now they just redirect to HK).

Philipp : from China, that precision was obvious ;-)

BTW, in a AFP article I've learnt later that China has already blocked some *requests* to Google. That means you can access to this site, but if you search for some specific keywords you get a blank page.

Indeed,

http://www.neowin.net/news/china-fires-back-at-google-by-blocking-hong-kong-search-results

<<When Google took the first step and stopped filtering its results for China, the world knew that China would not sit back and take no action. Early on Tuesday morning China began blocking access to or filtering results from google.com.hk.>>