Heh, fair enough about the headline. I didn't want to look like a hard-arse, but there were so many rumours flying it seemed reasonable to clarify.

You've got a good scoop on the breakdown of censorship -- nowhere else I've seen has picked it up. I misread Google's statement in that regard.

I don't really understand what the game plan is, but, safe to say, I don't think you can take "we'll sit down and work something out" at face value.

I agree. Trying to make sense of it, perhaps Google had already decided to leave China (for whatever reason) and decided that this was the best way to do it. They get some good PR in the West, maybe some leverage with other governments in markets where they're the only player. Bad publicity from security breaches could be so worrying that they wanted to control the story breaking itself, although obviously that wouldn't be cause for withdrawal from a large market. In any case, this post (linked form ESWN) claims that there were rumours of a withdrawal a few weeks back.

Google has not 'embargoed China'. In response to alleged security breaches targeted at human rights campaigners, Google has stated that it is no longer willing to censor search results in google.cn. The statement makes it clear that Google plans to negotiate over the next few weeks with the Chinese government, rather than take any action immediately.

Obviously this is not how to do business in China, and as the statement has already hurt the feelings of the Chinese people, it's hard to imagine the negotiations working out. Can anyone provide background about google.cn's business success? I'm under the impression that over the last few years Baidu has taken more and more marketshare, but I don't have any detailed knowledge about this.

For anyone who's interested in Chinese current events, I highly recommend this blog written by Roland Soong (sometimes NSFW). In particular, he collated almost all the coverage of the Urumqi mass incident, including coverage of the triggering brawl in Southern China.

Has anyone else been particularly impressed by Maori TV, not just in the way it handled this incident, but in general? They've been screening some very good films, too.

"Emmersons JP, it is a limited brew made each winter, last years one had raspberry in it"

I'm pretty sure that the Emerson's JP released last year was a Tripel, and this year's is a brown ale flavoured with new cherries.

If you've tried fruit-flavoured beer that tasted like a fizzy drink, you probably got a Belgian lamic (made with an eclectic cultivar containing many different types of bacteria and fungi) that had been sweetened. Lambic beers are often tart and somewhat sour, and some breweries, such as Timmermans, add sugar to make it more palatable for the first-time drinker. Fruit are often added, the most popular being cherries (kreik) and raspberry (frambois). It's quite possible to find unsweetened lambics in boutique beer sections throughout most of New Zealand, and I strongly recommend them to anyone who's had an unfavourable experience with sweet fruit-beer in the past. Unfortunately, even compared to local microbrews, the price is prohibitive.