Just a few days ago, Google made good (to the surprise of many) on an announcement that they were 'shutting down China'.
Many were skeptical that the search giant would actually turn off one of the fastest growing markets in the world. Others cheered, as the move, spearheaded by none other than Google's co-founder Sergey Brin, became reality.
Google's reasoning was censorship of the search engine's results but also came just a few weeks after some significant hacking of US companies (including Google) from what many believe came directly from Google's China headquarters in Beijing.
In the US, members of Congress applauded the move. In China, reaction was mixed with some taking the Google 'side' and wanting an open Internet, while others were angry that the US-based company would target their country.
Google redirected traffic earlier this week from Google.cn to Google.hk (Hong Kong) with mixed results, as the 'mainland' began blocking various Google services.
Hong Kong was 'given back' to China by the UK in the 1990's and is a Chinese territory but still enjoys a thriving economy and much more open relations and trade with other countries. It was only until about a decade later that portions of mainland China began their direct and aggressive trade programs with the 'outside world'.
In a surprise announcement yesterday, GoDaddy, the largest domain registrar in the world, also said they're pulling out and stopping the registration of .cn domain names. The reason given was a new set of regulations by the Chinese government for registering those domains.
The question now becomes whose next? Will it work?
Will China open up? More importantly ..... Will they float their currency making free trade fair trade?
Regardless, this chapter had to be one of the most fascinating in Internet history.