Google Hong Kong not providing as many options as intended

In a follow-up to the Google China case (as reported in Kaja's earlier post), the New York Times reported a change in search queries on the new Google Hong Kong site.

According to the article, searches for controversial topics peaked on Tuesday, the day Google stopped filtering its search results after redirected Google China to the less censored Google Hong Kong. The article said that searches for terms like "Tiananmen," "Falun Gong" and "corruption" increased by more than 10 times on that day. There were about 2.5 million searches for phrases containing "Tiananmen" and about 4.7 million searches for "Falun Gong."

However, within the next few days, searches for those terms decreased quickly. Many people did not start searching political terms as soon as the regulations were dropped, and even though Google Hong Kong does not filter search results, some of the pages it brought up were still restricted and blocked when accessed in China.

Users of Google Hong Kong in certain Chinese cities even found the Hong Kong site unavailable for a few minutes when searching Chinese government or political terms.

So, even though Google has stopped censoring, there is still so much firewall protection in China that access to any controversial information is blocked and limited. This is just one update of what I'm sure will be a long line of debate, controversy and information in the Google China case. As with many other developing stories, this is one to follow as further advancements come up and new developments arise.