Gotta say "the G" was pretty clever about it. seems like a smart way to stay in China while not staying in China. And Google's "" -- which displays which Google services Beijing is mucking with on any particular day -- is sheer brilliance.

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(I understand negotiations between the two parties got pretty heated near the end -- at least, .)

Symbolically, Google's public repudiation of China is huge. The company is walking away from potentially millions of dollars in ad revenue.

In practical terms, though, it doesn't do much. China is still blocking search results, and it's retaliating by forcing the country's two largest telecoms, China Unicom and China Mobile, to over search engines and Android phone manufacturing. Chinese Web portals are -- no doubt with some strong "encouragement" from Beijing.