This is crazy. I'm sure that being a publicly traded company worth over $100bn played into this decision...and i can't necessarily say that they made the wrong decision...but i sure think it stinks. The only way to bring about change is have the balls to do it. Sure would have been cool to see Google say FU to China's demand.

Absolutely, Eric. I'm using Clusty in protest.

This made me immediately want to switch search engines, but I read that MSN and Yahoo had already caved in the same way. Are any of the major search engines taking a stand on this?

That's a good question that I hadn't thought of regarding Clusty. This is a pretty hot topic, someone will likely present a full reporting on it soon.

I like Clusty's service a lot. I think that Vivisimo does some great stuff...however, i can't think of a worse name for a search engine. Change it from Clusty and i think you have a serious shot.