Bravo Google

Good news on the radio this morning in the ongoing fight against human rights abuses in China: Google has announced it will no longer co-operate with the Chinese Government's censorship of internet searches relating to politically sensitive matters. I'm not fully up on the technicalities of these things, being just on the borderline of what the sloppy press would classify "silver surfer" age (there wasn't anything as wonderful as the internet in my youth, lads and lasses), but apparently Google searches now are being rerouted through a server (if that's the right word) in Hong Kong. The difficulty is that results have to come back through a Chinese server which is still censored, but even if Google's move fails completely to liberate information for Chinese citizens, it's marvellous to see such a huge corporation putting conscience before profit at last. Okay, it took a few years, but to be fair to Google China was sending confusing signals about its readiness to open up to the world.