GoDaddy girl Candice Michelle
Google and Domain Registrar GoDaddy plan to pull services from China.
China has officially pulled down their site for China and temporarily redirected it to Hong Kong, but has since been censored from the Chinese government. For a short period of time the redirecting site would let people freely search the internet search results provided by Google, but the Chinese government quickly began blocking the services.
Although Google was complying with China’s censorship policies previously, they are essentially left in the same position as before. According to Google, they were also in planning to become the default search provider for China, which means a sizable loss of funds to them. There is no sign of Google entirely leaving China at this time, but it seems their censorship has won this battle.
GoDaddy
The well known domain registrar GoDaddy is currently planning on discontinuing their registration with China (.cn domains).
After recent attacks on their servers, as well as Google, GoDaddy is trying to make a political stand on the privacy of their users. The attacks would essentially disable specific sites associated with the GoDaddy .cn domains.
According to GoDaddy’s Christine Jones, China requires registrants of .cn sites to provide head shots along with additional business credentials. She goes on to say that GoDaddy does not want to be an agent for the Chinese government.
“We were immediately concerned about the motives behind the increased level of registrant verification being required,” Christine N. Jones, general counsel of the Go Daddy Group, told the Congressional-Executive Commission on China on Wednesday. “The intent of the procedures appeared, to us, to be based on a desire by the Chinese authorities to exercise increased control over the subject matter of domain name registrations by Chinese nationals.”
