Now that they're running their own servers within China, at least the common Chinese searcher (not operating under a proxy connection) is told when the results from their search terms have been restricted due to political and legal reasons.
Surely much better than quietly dropping them. It may be CENSORSHIP, but at least it's the sort of CENSORSHIP that activates an enquiring mind, CENSORSHIP that undermines as opposed to conceals.
And looking at Google.cn a few things will always slip through the net...
that's a really good point. Its clear that Chinese people don't want boycotts but want other countries to engage with them (unlike people from other countries) so this could be a great start.
I know, though I've not been keeping up with the coverage much on this, what I have seen seems to have failed to have reported this.
And I'm sure that the other search giants have gotten away with dumping on the Chinese population without nowhere near as much fuss.
If you want to test how things are going through in China but can't read the language, do a contentious China search at http://www.google.cn/ and then copy/paste the resulting URL into their own translation tools at http://www.google.com/translate_t.