The other day, Google announced that it would be redirecting its Chinese language search engine at Google.cn to Google.com.hk, the company’s Hong Kong site, where they would now censor search results. That does not mean, however, that Google has ceased operations in China entirely.

The company has now announced that it intends to continue research and development work in China, as well as maintain a sales presence in the country. Google put a post up on the Google Enterprise Blog explaining what this means for Google Apps users in China.

"First, we very much hope that the Chinese government respects our decision, though we are well aware that China could at any time block access to our services in mainland China," the Google Apps Team says. "We will be carefully monitoring access issues and we have created this new web page, which we will update regularly each day, so that you can see which Google services are available in China."

"Second, it is important to know that there are several networking configurations and associated technologies available to help ensure ongoing access to your critical business services such as Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Docs," the team adds. "These network configurations, such as a Virtual Private Network (VPN) connection, secure shell (SSH) tunneling, or using a proxy server, are already in place by many businesses with worldwide operations who serve their users from various locations. Companies should consult their own technical, legal and policy personnel to find a solution that works best for them."

"Finally, we do not host any Google Apps services, or your data, in mainland China," the team says. "Moreover, Google employees in mainland China do not have access to any Apps systems or customer data."

Google reminds Apps users that they can view performance info outside of China at anytime using the Google Apps Status Dashboard. The company also points out that Google is not the only tech company to face such issues when serving Chinese users.

The odds of Google keeping its Chinese search operation running are starting to seem quite small.  The Chinese government has started advising Google’s partners to prepare contingency plans, and one anonymous person who’s supposed to be close to Google even said the company is 99.9 percent likely to shut things down.

The "99.9 percent" comment, which we first mentioned over the weekend, comes courtesy of two Financial Times reporters.  One of them, Kathrin Hille, is even located in Beijing.  These details lend credence to its authenticity, even though it would of course be nicer to have a quote attributed to some executive or authority.

As for the information related to Google’s partners, the situation’s similar.  Sharon LaFraniere spoke to an "industry expert . . . . who did not want to be identified for fear of retaliation by the government."

Then LaFraniere reported for the New York Times, "The Chinese government information authorities warned some of Google’s biggest Web partners . . . that they should prepare backup plans in case Google ceases censoring the results of searches on its local Chinese-language search engine . . ."

The only thing that might prevent a showdown at this point is Google’s concern for its employees in China, perhaps along with the company’s desire to keep its advertising and mobile operations alive.

In this edition of the Weekly Wrapup – our newsletter summarizing the top stories of the week – we analyze how Google CEO Eric Schmidt thinks the Web will evolve, review Hulu’s latest plans to make money, investigate use cases for Google Wave, ask why VCs aren’t investing in Augmented Reality, review the latest Mobile Web statistics, and more. We also check in on our two main channels: ReadWriteEnterprise (devoted to ‘enterprise 2.0′ trends and products) and ReadWriteStart (dedicated to profiling startups and entrepreneurs).

Sponsor

Subscribe to Weekly Wrapup

You can subscribe to the Weekly Wrapup by RSS or by email (form below).

RWW Weekly Wrap-up Email Subscription form:

Web Trends

Google’s Eric Schmidt on What the Web Will Look Like in 5 Years

Google CEO Eric Schmidt envisions a radically changed internet five years from now: dominated by Chinese-language and social media content, delivered over super-fast bandwidth in real time. Figuring out how to rank real-time social content is “the great challenge of the age,” Schmidt said in an interview in front of thousands of CIOs and IT Directors at last week’s Gartner Symposium/ITxpo Orlando 2009.

Mobile Web’s Explosive Growth

Mobile ad firm AdMob has revealed the dramatic changes the mobile industry has seen in their latest Mobile Metrics Report. It was only a year ago that the Motorola RAZR scored as the number one phone in America. One year later and half of the top ten are touchscreen devices, six include Wi-Fi capabilities, and six have mobile application stores. And as you would expect, this new crop of super-powered phones are making heavy use of the mobile web.

Why Aren’t VCs Backing Augmented Reality?

Some people believe that Augmented Reality (AR), the class of technologies that place images or data on top of other views of the physical world, could be the web browser of the future. AR has rocketed out of the research labs and is catching mass market interest fast – e.g. mobile phones displaying restaurant reviews when you look through your phone’s camera. Why then are VCs not investing more in Augmented Reality? Here are three reasons why we think investment in this sector has been slow so far.

Facebook Announces Roadmap for Developers

This week Facebook published a developer roadmap outlining upcoming relevant changes and a rough timeline for each. Changes include developer access to user emails, more prominent app displays on user profiles, all-new homepage dashboards for apps and games, and improvements to Open Graph and Analytics APIs. Read on for details and screenshots of the new faces of Facebook apps.

SEE MORE WEB TRENDS COVERAGE IN OUR TRENDS CATEGORY

ReadWriteEnterprise

Our channel ReadWriteEnterprise, devoted to ‘enterprise 2.0′ and using social software inside organizations.

Calendaring, Scheduling Meetings: Timebridge CEO Interview Reveals Strategic Importance of This Space

We have looked at Calendaring many times (such as in our round-up of 10 players). In our own work, we have started working with both Tungle and Doodle. To understand more about why this market is strategically interesting, we recently spoke with Yori Nelken, CEO of Timebridge (see our previous coverage here).

ReadWriteStart

Our channel ReadWriteStart, sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark, is dedicated to profiling startups and entrepreneurs.

Paul Graham: Priority Access to Twitter Is Practical Necessity

If hardcore hackers had any doubts whether the real-time web was a legitimate development environment, Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham is dispelling them. In an interview with Graham, ReadWriteWeb learned that the entrepreneur-turned-investor issued a “Request for Startups” (RFS) asking for ideas from companies utilizing Twitter and Justin.tv’s live video API. Groups who are accepted to Y-Combinator and fall under these categories will be given “priority access” to Twitter and Justin.tv.

SEE MORE STARTUPS COVERAGE IN OUR READWRITESTART CHANNEL

Web Products

Google Wave Use Cases: Education

Google Wave is a much hyped new Internet-based communications and collaboration platform. It was announced at the end of May, released as a ‘Preview’ product shortly after and 100,000 more invites were made available at the end of September. Early users reported mixed feelings. But one month after Google Wave was opened to tens of thousands of people, how are people using it now? What use cases are being discovered? We started this series by looking at the education sector.

What are Hulu’s Mysterious Plans?

Everyone is looking to Hulu as the future of Internet TV. A joint venture between several major networks, Hulu delivers free, ad-supported programming via online streams – an untested model for long-term profitability, at least when it comes to television. While consumers have been enjoying the service since its launch in 2007, recent statements by a News Corp exec have people wondering: can Hulu make the ad-supported model work? Or does the company have other plans?

Google Launches Music Search: Partners with MySpace, Lala, Gracenote and Others

This week Google announced the launch of Google Music. This new service is powered by Lala and MySpace’s iLike. Other partners include Gracenote, iMeem, Pandora and Rhapsody. Google has also partnered with the major music labels: EMI, Sony Music, Universal Music Group and Warner Music. Through Lala and iLike, Google will also be able to feature music from a large number of independent labels.

Google Search Gets Personal: Social Search Launches in Google Labs

Social Search went live in Google Labs this week. Google announced that it was working on this Social Search feature at the Web 2.0 Summit last week. Social Search taps into a user’s social network profiles and displays relevant links and status updates that members of a user’s own social network have shared at the bottom of the default search results page. According to Google, Social Search will enhance the search experience on Google by providing users with more personally relevant search results.

Brizzly Adds Facebook – Aims to be The Blogger.com of Social Media

Brizzly wants to be to microblogging what Blogger.com was to blogging five years ago. Currently, Brizzly offers a user-friendly browser-based interface for Twitter and Facebook. The Facebook integration went live this weekand more social media applications will be added as the product evolves. Brizzly shares much of the same philosophy as Blogger. It’s simple to use and aims to make microblogging easy to understand and use by a mainstream audience.

Currently Brizzly is in private beta, but ReadWriteWeb has scored 2000 invites for our readers to test it out! (see the post for the code).

SEE MORE WEB PRODUCTS COVERAGE IN OUR PRODUCTS CATEGORY

That’s a wrap for another week! Enjoy your weekend everyone.

Discuss