When Google finally ended the suspense（悬而未决的问题）, it did so by stating the obvious. "Figuring out how to make good on (信守 类似还有make good on debts)our promise to stop censoring(审查制度) search [in China]," wrote David Drummond, the company's chief legal officer, on the company's blog last night, "has been hard." For more than two months, ever since its Jan. 12 announcement that it would soon stop censoring its search results in the country with the largest number of Internet users in the world,（即指“中国”，避免重复，且强调其受众损失之大） the California giant was headed for a direct clash（冲突，带sh结尾的动词似乎总与碰击有关，如crash/smash/dash，可音形意结合来记忆） with the authorities in Beijing, who have been repeatedly unambiguous（清楚的,反义词ambiguous大一时候学的，印象深刻是因为解释为“暧昧的”，ambiguous smile让人想起杨丞琳的那首成名曲了） in their stance. Censorship is the law of the land in China, and Google had to abide by it or else "suffer the consequences," as an official put it last week. （两方对立，箭在弦上，不得不发）

Google's decision is to route（根据上下文，这次可以猜哦^_^） all of the traffic on its Chinese search engine, Google.cn, to its Hong Kong–based site, Google.com.hk. The company has added simplified Chinese characters to the site (Hong Kong Chinese uses traditional characters（知道“简体字”和“繁体字”怎么说咯） for reading and writing) and a color-coded list of features (such as shopping, maps, music) which are still available, all of which make it now look "a bit like an eye test," as Shen Liling, a young Shanghai netizen（很好玩的合成词：net+citizen网+民）, says. （eye test，小讽刺。去去留留，想来Google还是舍不得中国这块大蛋糕的。）

But the practical result was that, for a few hours at least, search results were no longer censored. On Tuesday morning, March 23, in China, netizens could type in "Falun Gong,"（法轮功，高口的“fengshui”搞晕了多少听众） the banned religious cult（邪教）, and what popped up（冒出来） was far different than what had come up just the previous night. (Among other things, the official Falun Gong website showed up in search results.) So after nearly four years of doing business in China, Google has lived up to its campaign promise. It is no longer censoring its search results for Web surfers behind China's Great Firewall. But it took the Chinese government less than 24 hours to start censoring searches itself: a search for "Falun Gong" from the mainland later in the day prompted only a "Web page not available" response.

For that short span, the Hong Kong route was a relatively elegant solution to the dilemma in which the company had found itself.（真漂亮的句型，紧凑） Xinhua, a government-owned news service, quoted an unnamed official in Beijing's State Information Council calling the move "totally wrong. [Google has] violated its written promise. We're uncompromisingly opposed to the politicization of commercial issues（商业问题政治化）." （这里指的大概就是美国对于人民币升值进行施压，以帮助自己的出口盈利，而未果的问题吧）

Just before Google moved its China site to Hong Kong — a switch that came in the dead of Monday night, China time — Beijing had given some indication that it understood the time was coming for some adult supervision, at least when it comes to the overall U.S.-China relationship. Wen met with a group of foreign businessmen in Beijing the same day. His tone, participants in the meeting say, was calm and relatively conciliatory. He told them China had no interest in "trade and currency wars" and pointed to a forthcoming meeting in Washington — the so-called bilateral Strategic and Economic Dialogue — as a moment both sides could use to bring things down a notch. "The dialogue in May will be very important," Wen said. "It's an opportunity to address the problems between the U.S. and China." As a participant said after the session, "There was no finger-pointing（指指点点，很形象的“责骂”） or threats ... He obviously understands very well the stakes involved and that everyone needs to calm down a bit."

How calm Beijing will be when it comes to Google's latest move is an open question. "We very much hope that the Chinese government respects our decision," Drummond said in his statement on Google's blog, "though we are well aware that it could at any time block access to our services." The odds are that it will probably come to that, and even if for some reason the authorities allow Google.cn to operate via Hong Kong, e-commerce executives in China who advertised on the search engine appear glum（闷闷不乐的，广告商生气了，这个问题严重了）. One noted that Drummond's own statement acknowledges that the complicated nature of the switch means a slowdown in service is possible and that "some products [might be] temporarily inaccessible as we switch everything over." （不说不觉得，google的搜索速度好像还真慢了，可以和办公室的网络媲美）That, the Chinese executive said, "is the best-case scenario（剧本）. The worst is that they are completely blocked in China at some point. So there's no good scenario here from our standpoint."（很可怜的Google要说一句“Hope for the worst, prepare for the worst”）

Nor, frankly, does there appear to be one for Google. Financial analysts all note that the revenue the company makes in China amounts to just 1% to 2% of its global revenue（收益）for now, from a strict bottom-line standpoint, the China contretemps is immaterial. But they also note, as Bank of America–Merrill Lynch analyst Justin Post wrote, that in the longer term, the decision to effectively exit the market with the most Internet users on the planet "doesn't seem to make a lot of business sense."

Last month, Google co-founder Sergey Brin told attendees at a technology conference in California that he still wanted "to work within the Chinese system and provide more and better information." At heart, he added, he's "an optimist." Moving his Chinese search engine to Hong Kong is Brin's shot at trying to live up to those words. In the same meeting, however, he acknowledged that "a lot of people think I'm naive." The Chinese government, it's safe to say, will now be the judge of that（想起之前看到过的“he will be the final say”他是最终决策者）（好G吃不吃回头草，您看着办吧）

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