Internet users experienced wild swings in access to results on Google's Chinese search engine yesterday, in a sign that Beijing was struggling to decide on the level of censorship for the site after Google moved the service out of the mainland.
At around 10am, users in Beijing were confronted with browser errors for every Chinese term they entered. Searches for “Xinhua News Agency”, “Ministry of Commerce”, and “Ministry of Health” returned a blank screen. Some 30 minutes later the problem had disappeared.
An employee of Perfect World, the online gaming company, reported that a search for company information on google.com.hk had failed to return any results.