Just saw this. Google has launched a Google China Blog. Yes, it's in Chinese so I can't read it. But clearly it's an attempt to answer critics of the company's decision to cooperate with the Chinese government in censoring search results. Here's the story in ChinaTechNews. And a less charitable spin on it here at P2Pnet.

Included are a few links in English in the right-hand column including John Battelle's Searchblog. Kinda cool. That's what you might call "getting exposure." What's the population of China? I forget... [see below] but probably growing exponentially along with the blogosphere. Leave me a comment if you know!

Oh, and what's my stance on the doing-business-with-a-repressive-government thing? It's complicated. I lean towards the view that Google's being available to Chinese Internet users - even in a limited way - is better than not being available at all to them as a resource. And your take on it is... ?

UPDATE

But this reaction may be rather simple-minded of me. Read NYTimes write-up of yesterday's House Subcommittee hearing on human rights with testimony from top execs at Cisco, Yahoo, Microsoft and Google. And another thoughtful account of the heated debate from BlogBusinessSummit.

And finally, details from Rebecca MacKinnon on the proposed Global Online Freedom Act of 2006.

From L.A. Times re online population of China:

"An estimated 110 million to 120 million Chinese are online. It is the single most important market and single most important strategy for Internet companies for the next 10 years," said Safa Rashtchy, a Piper Jaffray analyst."

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