The battle between Google and China (yes, the country) keeps getting more and more dramatic, and today may have marked the last straw for Google.

China forced local ISPs to block internet access to Google search sites today, primarily to Hong Kong, after Google haphazardly decided to reroute all Google China traffic to Google Hong Kong. This means that when you try to access Google.cn (the Chinese local Google), you’ll automatically be redirected to Google.com.hk, the Hong Kong local Google.

The move by Google was an attempt to curb the censorship that China is imposing on Google to perform on search results. The move is perfectly legal, and actually makes sense, since servers in Hong Kong are not required by Chinese laws to undergo censorship, unlike servers in China.

China was not pleased with this move, obviously.

Google and China had been warring against each other, primarily because of China’s regime forcing Google to apply censorship in search results originating from the country. It is interesting to note that while Google has maintained a rather monopolistic hold on web search in most of the world, it only maintains a rather conservative 30% market share within China. Coupled with the fact that Google is being forced to censor their service in the country, the notion that Google is maintaining a relatively small (we use that term lightly) market in China might seem pretty appalling.

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