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When Google finally ended the suspense, it did so by stating the obvious. "Figuring out how to make good on our promise to stop censoring 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, the California giant was headed for a direct clash with the authorities in Beijing, who have been repeatedly unambiguous in their stance. Censorship is the law of the land in China, and Google had to abide by it or "suffer the consequences," as one official put it last week.

Google's decision is to route all of the traffic on its...