Meaning, you type in a few words and you’ll get whatever you are looking for. No strange message saying the website you are trying to seek is forbidden. No watching the cursor load and load and load and load… to no end.

Want to search about the Dalai Lama? How about the Tank Man? Go for it.

That’s because Google has officially said that it is no longer willing to censor search results.

When Google.CN launched in 2006, the company agreed to censor sensitive material – details of human rights groups, certain sources reporting on peasant protests and reports from Tibet and Xinjiang, and references to the pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

On Google’s blog, the internet giant explains why they’ve put their foot down: they detected a cyber attack in mid-December, originating from China, and they believe it was aimed at gathering information on Chinese human rights activists.

From the Google blog:

“We have taken the unusual step of sharing information about these attacks with a broad audience not just because of the security and human rights implications of what we have unearthed, but also because this information goes to the heart of a much bigger global debate about freedom of speech. In the last two decades, China’s economic reform programs and its citizens’ entrepreneurial flair have lifted hundreds of millions of Chinese people out of poverty. Indeed, this great nation is at the heart of much economic progress and development in the world today.

We launched Google.cn in January 2006 in the belief that the benefits of increased access to information for people in China and a more open Internet outweighed our discomfort in agreeing to censor some results. At the time we made clear that “we will carefully monitor conditions in China, including new laws and other restrictions on our services. If we determine that we are unable to achieve the objectives outlined we will not hesitate to reconsider our approach to China.”

These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered–combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web–have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.”

Really interesting stuff.

“In the last year, China has ramped up Internet censorship denying netizens access to social networking services and websites hosted overseas. Friends in China disappeared from Twitter, Facebook and Youtube for weeks at a time, only to resurface again with status updates like this: “finally get access to facebook,GFW go to hell.”

Chinese authorities have said the ramped up censorship was a move to stop “vulgar” content, but clearly Chinese internet users are not amused.

So what does this mean? It means Google may close it’s offices in China.

Not far from my old stomping grounds in Beijing, is the Google office in WuDaoKou 五道口。

Apparently, some locals are dropping off flowers - have they come to pay their respects?