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The challenge thrown down by Google last week seemed unequivocal: Either China accepts uncensored information on Google.cn or the Internet giant will shut down its operations in the country.

“We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn,” said David Drummond, senior vice president and Google's chief legal officer. “We will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.”