Google said Monday that it was closing its China-based Internet search service and instead directing Chinese users to a Hong Kong-based uncensored version of its search engine, which may get blocked in mainland China.

The Google Blog has more information.

The task has been truly herculean, and I have deep respect for the engineers and designers who pulled it through over literally years of iteration and countless changes. I left before Buzz shipped, but learned a lot of valuable lessons about building something that big.

What a difference! I no longer feel like I’m dragging a phone with me “just in case” I would need to get in touch with somebody – now I’m having a useful (and admittedly pretty good-looking) gadget instead. The fact that you can use it as a phone too is kind of secondary.

The Article 29 committee, comprising data protection officials from all 27 E.U. countries, has asked the leading search engine makers to respond to their concerns by the end of this month.

According to their privacy FAQ, Google anonymises IP addresses “after 9 months”. However, this doesn’t mean all IP information is deleted after that:

Microsoft will delete all parts of the IP (Internet Protocol) address after six months, while Google still retains part of the address after its self-imposed nine-month cut-off point.

I wonder how Google will respond to the Article 29 committee.

Google URL Shortener is currently available for Google products and not for broader consumer use.

There have been zero -zero – official statements about Google selling the device to retailers or directly to consumers. There is a Wall Street Journal article which claims that this is the strategy Google is headed in, but the post contains a number of poorly sourced and suspect facts, so we say take it with a major grain of salt. Other reports say “what if” and “could.” That doesn’t make it so. As of right now, the only way to get this phone is to work for Google.

Those just installing Chrome will observe that it’s incredibly fast—as in, Safari levels of fast. This is certainly a plus when many alternate browsers (hi, Firefox) are, well, not. Page renders are quick and keyboard commands can keep up with my 140wpm fingers, something Safari sometimes even has trouble with from time to time.

I’m missing the Safari keyboard shortcuts that allow you to access the bookmarks in the Bookmarks Bar with option-1/2/3 and so on.

Google was also slower than 30 other public DNS services I tested against.

(via Download Squad)

Tom Turvey, Google’s director of strategic partnerships, now explains that the device does not need to be connected to the Internet to read the book after it was accessed once. He also clarified that the company is “not focused on a dedicated eReader or device of any kind.”

Interesting to se how Kindle consumers react when Google launches this service next year.