As soon as Google announced yesterday that it would stop censoring search results and shift its Chinese-language service to servers in Hong Kong, the Chinese government reacted immediately by using the firewalls to block access to certain searches.

With the two-month war of atrittion between the Chinese government and the Mountain View, California-based Google finding no resolution, the internet giant announced late last night that it had stopped censoring its search services, Google Search, Google News, and Google Images on Google.cn and was redirecting users to its servers in Hong Kong.

David Drummond, chief legal officer of Google said in a blogpost yesterday that Google.com.hk, will offer uncensored search in simplified Chinese, specifically designed for users in mainland China and delivered via Goolge's servers in Hong Kong.

In January, Google had threatened to exit from China, the world's biggest internet market, after a highly sophisticated and targeted cyber attack originating from China tried to break into the e-mail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. (See: Google threatens to exit China after cyber attacks)

Drummond had said at that time that Google detected a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on its corporate infrastructure originating from China in mid-December, which resulted in the theft of its intellectual property.

Refusing to bow any further to the strict censorship laws under which it is compelled to operate in China, Google had said it was ready to exit from the Chinese market, inwhich it has made its biggest investments.

Although the Chinese government held talks with Google on two occasions, once on 29 January and again on 25 February to see whether Google would continue to operate under the country's internet laws, the search engine said that the Chinese government had made it crystal clear throughout the discussions that self-censorship was a non-negotiable legal requirement.

Drummond said that directing mainland China's search to Hong Kong, ''Is a sensible solution to the challenges we've faced - it's entirely legal and will meaningfully increase access to information for people in China.''

He also added, ''We very much hope that the Chinese government respects our decision, though we are well aware that it could at any time block access to our services. We will therefore be carefully monitoring access issues, so that everyone can see which Google services are available in China.''

But the Chinese government reacted swiftly by erecting firewalls to block 384 million Chinese web surfers from accessing Google's to Hong Kong-based internet site.

Searches on Tiananmen were not available on Google.com.hk web sites to China's mainland web users nor were keyword searches related to the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement.

All such searches displayed ''cannot display the webpage'' or ''network error.''

According to analysts, Google knew that China would immediately block users from mainland China accessing its Hong Kong servers, but intentionally routed Chinese users to its servers in Hong Kong, only to embarrass the Chinese government.

For the first time a senior Chinese official had made a rare statement last month on the Google-China spat by saying that Google has to abide by the country's laws if it wanted to operate in the country; China's minister of industry and information technology Li Yizhong told reporters, "If you don't respect Chinese laws, you are unfriendly and irresponsible, and the consequences will be on you."

Chinese officials were not surprised by this Google's move and were swift to react by blocking searches not favourable to the government.

However, Google's withdrawal from China is only partial since it will continue R&D work and also to maintain its sales staff in Mainland China.