'Great Firewall of China' Blocks Some Searches

Yesterday Google announced that it would be pulling out of China and instead redirecting Chinese users to Google.com.hk, where the search engine would be offering uncensored results in simplified Chinese.

While it seemed like an adequate solution for Google, most assumed China would block access to Google.com.hk eventually and media reports suggest that day is upon us.

TechRadar reports that the 'great firewall of China' is already blocking search results from Google's Hong Kong hosted site.  TR says Chinese Internet users searching for information on Falun Gong, the banned spiritual movement, or '89 student movement' through Google Hong Kong were met with an all-too familiar message: "the connection was reset" today.

CNet cites Gene Munster, a financial analyst with Piper Jaffray, who is reporting something similar. Munster has a contact in China who says the message would appear after consecutive searches for a particular topic or repeated searches about a sensitive subject. However, Munster said that restarting the computer after you ran into problems seemed to restore access.

More on Google's decision to leave China:

• Google's blog post on leaving China
• China's reaction to Google leaving China