This afternoon, Google made its expected announcement on the future of operations in China. The background, of course, is that Google had said recently that it would no longer censor search results in China, which China said put the company in violation of Chinese laws. Which brings us to today. In its announcement, Google said that traffic from within mainland China to Google.cn, the local Google homepage, will redirect from now on to Google.com/hk, the Hong Kong iteration of Google search. Google said it will continue its R&D operations in China (which leaves open the possibility of development in mobile, OS, etc.).

The long-awaited National Broadband Plan was, as you might be aware, finally released Tuesday by a small planning unit within the Federal Communications Commission. What's been somewhat surprising is how the reaction to the plan among broadband-access advocates seems to be that it's a good document, as far as it goes. Fair enough. But a close read of this text suggests that what was given unto us doesn't go all that far.