Eric Auchard

SAN FRANCISCO: Web search leader Google Inc. said on Tuesday it was introducing a new service for China that seeks to avoid a confrontation with the government by restricting access to services to which users contribute such as e-mail, chat rooms and blogs.

The new Chinese service at google.cn will offer a censored version of Google's popular search system that could restrict access to thousands of terms and Web sites.

Hot topics might include issues like independence for Taiwan or Tibet or outlawed spiritual group Falun Gong.

In seeking to compete more aggressively in the world's second biggest Internet market -- where Google has lost ground to a more popular home-grown search company Baidu Inc. -- the company is facing the toughest challenge yet to its corporate mantra of "Don't do evil."

In a compromise that trades off Google's desire to provide universal access to information in order to exist within local laws, Google will not offer its Gmail e-mail service, Web log publishing services or chat rooms -- tools of self-expression that could be used for political or social protest.

Instead, it said it would initially offer four of its core services -- Web site and image search, Google News and local search -- while working toward introducing additional services over time.

"Other products -- such as Gmail and Blogger -- will be introduced only when we are comfortable that we can do so in a way that strikes a proper balance among our commitments to satisfy users' interests, expand access to information, and respond to local conditions," the company said in a statement.

The move in China comes less than a week after Google resisted the U.S. Justice Department's efforts to get information about commonly used sex search terms. That government demand was met by search rivals such as Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft, spokesmen for those companies said.

"China is the most repressive censorship regime on the Internet," said John Palfrey, one of the principal investigators on a joint university research project on global Internet censorship known as the OpenNet Initiative.

Palfrey, director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University and a law professor, has ties to Google executives involved in the China project and is working on a spyware research effort that is partly funded by Google.

He estimated that through active and passive censorship tens of thousands of search terms are blocked for Web users inside China.

"It comes down to how well Google reacts to the first or the second or the hundredth clash with China," he said of the regular negotiations and potential confrontations that are likely to be necessary between Google and Chinese authorities.

GOOGLE FACES GROWN-UP CHALLENGES

Google has long offered a full-featured Chinese language version of its Google.com service available to users worldwide and run from computers in its California headquarters.

Company officials said they expect in the coming months to begin running the Google.cn service from facilities within China in order to ensure speedier search results for users in China and to meet local laws governing domestic Web services.

Sites outside China often suffer slowdowns or are blocked under a system -- nicknamed the "great firewall" -- in which the Web in China is walled off from the global Internet. This allows the Chinese government to both actively censor what citizens can see, while it puts pressure on Internet service providers to self-censor an even wider range of material.

Google officials said they planned to notify users of its Google.cn service when the company has restricted access to certain search terms or the Web sites behind them.

In different political circumstances, Google also notifies users of its German, French and U.S. services when it blocks access to material such as banned Nazi sites in Europe.

"In order to operate from China, we have removed some content from the search results available on Google.cn, in response to local law, regulation or policy," the company said. Aware of the trade-offs it is making, Google executives said they believe the company can play a more positive role by participating in the Chinese market, despite restrictions, than by boycotting the country in order to avoid such compromises.

"While removing search results is inconsistent with Google's mission, providing no information (or a heavily degraded user experience that amounts to no information) is more inconsistent with our mission," the company stated.

(Additional reporting by Scott Hillis in San Francisco)