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“Redirected in China” usually refers to Google’s 2010 decision to send Google.cn visitors to Google.com.hk. That company-controlled redirect was temporary and is not a description of how every foreign search engine works today. Network blocking, redirects, and censorship inside an otherwise reachable search service are separate events, and access can change by URL, location, network and date.
Why was Google redirected in China?
On 22 March 2010, Google said it had stopped censoring results on Google.cn and was redirecting visitors to Google.com.hk. The Hong Kong service offered uncensored search in simplified Chinese, delivered from servers in Hong Kong. Google described the move as its response to the difficulty of operating a mainland search service while refusing to continue filtering results.
This was a Google-controlled redirect: the company chose the destination and announced the policy. It should not be confused with a Chinese network redirect, DNS manipulation or a general rule that all Western search engines were sent to Hong Kong.
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The automatic redirect did not last. In a 29 June 2010 update, Google’s David Drummond wrote, “We currently automatically redirect everyone using Google.cn to Google.com.hk, our Hong Kong search engine.” The same announcement said Google would end that automatic redirect over the following days.
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Google instead planned to show a Google.cn landing page with a link to Google.com.hk. Drummond connected the change to objections from the Chinese government and Google’s effort to renew its Internet Content Provider (ICP) licence. The June statement records Google’s position and the company’s licensing concerns; it is not an independent measurement of what every mainland user could reach.
| Date | What Google announced | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| 22 March 2010 | Google.cn visitors were redirected to Google.com.hk for uncensored simplified-Chinese search. | A company-operated redirect from a mainland domain to a Hong Kong service. |
| 29 June 2010 | Google said it would stop the automatic redirect and provide a Google.cn landing page linking to Google.com.hk. | The automatic redirect was being withdrawn, partly in connection with ICP-licence renewal. |
| 2012 (date reported by the UK Home Office) | The Home Office’s January 2026 China country note says Google Search had been blocked since 2012. | A later network-access claim, not evidence that the 2010 company redirect was still operating. |
Does Google work in China now?
There is no single answer for every user or URL. The UK Home Office’s January 2026 China country note reports that Google Search has been blocked since 2012 and Yahoo’s search function since 2018. That is a dated secondary report, not a live test of every province, internet provider, hostname or network.
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The practical distinction is important: the 2010 Google.cn-to-Google.com.hk decision was a historical business policy, while a later inability to connect may result from network filtering. Do not describe the old redirect as Google’s current access method, and do not infer that every foreign search brand is blocked identically.
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Is Bing blocked in China?
“Bing is redirected in China” is too broad to state without a current, URL-specific measurement. A Bing hostname, path or protocol can receive a different result from another. GreatFire’s testing methodology compares mainland probes with an outside control and reports categories such as blocked, redirected inside mainland China, intermittent, not blocked, not enough data and unresolvable.
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GreatFire also warns that results vary by province, network, time and URL. Its probes cover only selected vantage points. A timeout or a rapid connection refusal alone does not prove censorship: route failure and filtering can look similar. A defensible claim should name the exact URL, test date or measurement window, probe location and verdict.
How network blocking differs from search-result censorship
There are two separate layers:
- Network reachability: a connection may be reset, DNS may be poisoned, a download may fail, or traffic may be redirected. In this case the user may not obtain the search page at all.
- Filtering inside a service: the search page loads, but the provider removes or suppresses results, snippets, cached pages, autocomplete terms, related searches or recommendations.
A loaded page therefore does not prove that the result set is complete. Conversely, a failed connection does not tell you whether the service itself would have filtered a query.
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What happens when you search censored topics?
Citizen Lab Research Report 166 compared eight China-accessible platforms: Baidu, Baidu Zhidao, Bilibili, Microsoft Bing, Douyin, Jingdong, Sogou and Weibo. It identified more than 60,000 unique censorship rules across those platforms. In the study’s tested terms and methods, Baidu had more rules overall, but Bing’s political rules were broader, affected more results and restricted results from more website domains on average.
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Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesFind Drivers →Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsFree Scan →Those findings describe the researchers’ test set, not a permanent ranking of today’s services. They do not show that Bing is uncensored, that Baidu always suppresses more political results, or that the relative pattern is unchanged.
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China’s Cyberspace Administration explained in a 27 June 2016 notice that search providers must not provide legally prohibited information through links, summaries, snapshots, autocomplete, related searches or recommendations. Its wording states: “互联网信息搜索服务提供者不得以链接、摘要、快照、联想词、相关搜索、相关推荐等形式提供含有法律法规禁止的信息内容。” This official explanation is from 2016 and is not a complete account of all current law.
How to evaluate a claim about a redirect or block
- Identify the exact address. Record the hostname, path and whether the test used HTTP or HTTPS; different endpoints can have separate verdicts.
- Record where and when it was tested. Note mainland location, network provider, device or resolver setup and the date. Conditions can change quickly.
- Separate connection from content. Check whether the page failed to load, was reset, resolved unexpectedly, or loaded with missing results.
- Use a control. GreatFire compares mainland probes with an outside location to help distinguish a local failure from a wider outage.
- Report uncertainty. GreatFire says its headline uses conclusive tests from the preceding 90 days, only from selected probes. A result for one probe does not represent every user.
GreatFire also notes that, since 27 August 2026, roughly half of connections from several mainland probes to foreign addresses were refused very quickly. It excludes those refusals from blocking or reachability verdicts because they cannot reliably distinguish censorship from route failure. That is why a refusal or timeout by itself should not be presented as proof of a block.
Quick Recap
The accurate way to summarize the story
- Google’s March 2010 redirect from Google.cn to Google.com.hk was a short-lived company decision.
- Google’s June 2010 landing-page change ended the automatic redirect.
- The UK Home Office reported Google Search blocking since 2012, but that report is not a live, universal test.
- Bing and Baidu can be reachable while filtering results; Citizen Lab documented substantial censorship in both, with broader political effects for Bing in its experiment.
- No evidence here establishes a current universal “Bing redirect” in mainland China.
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