Increased trade, investment, and capitalism in closed societies can help open up those societies. But let's not kid ourselves: the fact that Coca-Cola, Levis, and King Kong are popular in totalitarian societies today, doesn't mean the principles laid out in the Bill of Rights will be triumph in totalitarian societies tomorrow. Google's decision to adhere to Chinese censorship restrictions in the search engines that they offer to the inhabitants of the world's fourth largest economy shows that--duh!--corporations value great private profits more than great public principles.

I've been curious as to just how Google is going to limit China's access, myself. Especially the Directory (which Google aquired from DMoz, a few years back and has never bothered to update since). I can see how leaving links off the front page would work, but how do you selectively cripple a search engine? Also, I wonder if it's possible for a talented Chinese hacker to get at content that's been restricted? Commie b@stards.

My thought is that they can't effectively limit it, and there will certainly be ways around any limitations that are imposed. This is a huge win the Chinese people.

I also assume that a Chinese internet user can use some sort of proxy or anonymizing proxy to get around. I use Tor every once and a while and when I surf to Google the page will display as country specific for whereever my IP is coming from. If someone in China is using an American proxy server then maybe they will get the unfiltered American Google?

I meant to include a link to Tor.

I just installed the Google Sidebar. Pretty cool! It blows away Internet Explorer's Favorites, as well as the Google Toolbar. If you have Google Earth installed, it shows a slideshow of aerial photos and maps randomly (you can minimize any portion of the Sidebar to make more room for news articles, web clips, favorites and so on).