ReadWriteWeb

Several news outlets are reporting this morning that China has finally blocked Google's search engine completely. This follows Google's move earlier this month, wherein the search engine giant moved its search engine service in China to Hong Kong, in hopes of taking advantage of the "One Country, Two Systems" policy that separates mainland China from recently returned Hong Kong.

As the Chinese government does not comment on their practice of specific censorship, only user reports are available, and they appear to be spotty and varied.

The Google break from China raises some questions for the enterprise considering cloud computing. It's one thing if the network goes down. That can be fixed. But when the government does its own blockade, that's another story.

Google Apps customers face this very issue. Google has the thorny task of explaining to its customers of what they may expect when using Google Apps in mainland China.

Lest we forget what is at stake with the situation involving Google and China, the Washington Post has published today a list of directions from the Chinese government sent out to all media outlets on how they are allowed to cover the incident. The rules are a stark reminder of why, no matter how long Google kowtowed to government demands there, the search engine's actions are important for the development of a free society.

Obtained and translated by China Digital Times, the instructions specifically outline how traditional and new media may or may not approach the topic.

It's been nearly a year since China first shutdown access to Twitter in preparation for the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, but today Google has opened up the doors again, in a way.

According to an article this morning in the Los Angeles Times, Google has added Twitter search results to its search engine there, "in effect, lifting a nine-month blackout of the microblogging service in China."

Kaiser Kuo presented today at SXSW about Google in China. He spoke about how the Google situation will impact Chinese Internet users, other companies and the Chinese government.

In the presentation, Kuo (who also spoke to ReadWriteWeb a week ago) clarified how censorship in China works. Contrary to popular belief, it is not the Great Firewall that has the most impact in China - but something China calls "self-discipline." Kuo also discussed what the next moves will be from Google, since he believes that the ball is in Google's court and Beijing won't push the situation.

The big news of the week was Google's efforts to remove censorship from its search results in China - read on for our coverage and analysis of this news. We also continued our exploration of the significant Internet trends of 2010, including Real-Time Web, Mobile Web and Internet of Things.

Note: We've refreshed the format for our longest running feature, the Weekly Wrapup. It now focuses more explicitly on the key trends that ReadWriteWeb is tracking in 2010, as well as giving you the highlights from the leading story of the week. Let us know your thoughts on the new format.

On March 15, at the prestigious Paley Center in New York City, a conversation will take place between Chinese digital activist and artist Ai Weiwei, Twitter co-founder and chairman Jack Dorsey, and yours truly, Richard MacManus, ReadWriteWeb founder and editor in chief. The moderator will be Orville Schell, the director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society in New York.

The topic of the event is the emergence of digital activism for fostering positive social change. The onsite event is invitation only, but it will be live streamed exclusively on ReadWriteWeb on Monday, March 15, at 6:30 PM EST (-5 GMT), from the Paley Center for Media, New York City.

On January 12 Google claimed that hackers from China had attempted to break into its infrastructure, in order to access the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. Because of those hacks, along with other malware attacks on Gmail accounts and ongoing concerns about the Chinese government limiting free speech on the Web, Google said in its blog that it was "no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn" and that it would discuss with the Chinese government operating "an unfiltered search engine." If unsuccessful, Google said that it might close down or cut back its operations in China.

It's now over 6 weeks since Google's original blog post, but there are no signs that the company has stopped censoring its search results in China - let alone shut down Google.cn.