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The days are winding down for many of the best and brightest who went to work for Google in China over the past couple of years. It now appears that it's no longer a matter of if Google is forced to exit the search business in the People's Republic, but when. It could be in a matter of weeks. Google employees can't say so publicly, of course — and some of the 700-plus employees who work at the company's Beijing headquarters will no doubt retain their jobs — but to say that others are fatalistic is to put it mildly. "What can we do?" says a computer scientist who has worked at Google China for more than two years. "If the search business in China is shut down, it's shut down. If I have to find another job when it happens, I'll do it."