From Computerworld: Google moving search records out of China:
Google has taken the tack of adding a “level of transparency” by indicating when results are being censored, “so at least the user knows what’s going on,” Norvig said.
On the customer protection front, Google has also resisted launching products like Gmail or Blogger in China to avoid being in the position of having to disclose user information to the Chinese government, he said.
These censorship and protection issues were part of what kept Google from entering China in the first place, Norvig said. He seemed frustrated by the widespread criticism of Google.cn’s censorship. “From 1998 up until this month, we resisted opening Google.cn for these reasons, and we didn’t see a lot of press coverage saying how courageous we were,” he said.
But political issues aren’t really paramount to most users in China, Norvig said.
“What’s important to users is access to information,” he said. “We’re giving them that, and we think that’s the most important. We’d like to give them all the information, but we just can’t.
“Some of the people want to query about democracy, but most of them just want to know about their pop stars.”