# Google leaves China - how will they stop access to it through other domains or email? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 26, 2010, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-leaves-china-how-will-they-stop-access-to-it-through-other-domains-or-email/533890 "2010-03-26T15:44:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![code\_grey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f4b2a3/32.png) [@code\_grey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/code_grey)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2010, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-leaves-china-how-will-they-stop-access-to-it-through-other-domains-or-email/533890/1 "2010-03-26T15:44:44Z")
will Chinese Great Firewall now hunt down every suspected instance of users contacting an overseas server that would redirect Google output to them either via HTTP or via email protocol? ---
**Author:** ![dre2xl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/34f0e0/32.png) [@dre2xl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dre2xl)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2010, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-leaves-china-how-will-they-stop-access-to-it-through-other-domains-or-email/533890/2 "2010-03-27T18:56:18Z")
My impression from my time in China is that users can get around firewalls by having a way of sharing ever-changing proxy servers – in a sense, the firewall is something of as a futile effort as shutting down, say, torrent sites. There wasn’t a lot of respect for it, but then again, I spent my time with a tech-savvy crowd that wasn’t your average Chinese Internet user. Of course, the government puts in a great deal of effort in their firewall. I was able to VPN into the US and have absolutely unrestricted access. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2010, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-leaves-china-how-will-they-stop-access-to-it-through-other-domains-or-email/533890/3 "2010-03-27T19:29:55Z")
On a related note, my Google response time has gone way down since this started. Anybody else have this problem? ---
**Author:** ![Markxxx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5daacb/32.png) [@Markxxx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Markxxx)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2010, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-leaves-china-how-will-they-stop-access-to-it-through-other-domains-or-email/533890/4 "2010-03-27T21:26:09Z")
Here’s an interesting article from the [Guardian.Co.UK](http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2010/mar/22/google-china-live) > [@](#): > > Google has redirected its [google.cn](http://google.cn) search engine to the uncensored equivalent in Hong Kong. That site, which like all sites in Hong Kong is basically considered to be foreign, is subject to the usual filtering by the Great Firewall. This means that Chinese surfers may see controversial listings in their results - but they can’t actually see the blocked pages themselves. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2010, 10:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-leaves-china-how-will-they-stop-access-to-it-through-other-domains-or-email/533890/5 "2010-03-28T10:05:52Z")
The firewall is trivially easy to get around. For an even slightly curious person, it’s no problem. But the vast majority of people are not interested enough to bother getting around the firewall. Many people simply accept it and do not question it. A surprising number of people are unaware it even exists. The goal is not to completely suppress information, which would be pretty impossible. It’s simply to make that information hard enough to get that most people won’t bother.