What does Google decision mean for Chinese users?

Google's decision to redirect users in China to its Hong Kong site is the latest salvos in an ongoing dispute between the search giant, which entered China's market in 2006, and Beijing. Here is a snapshot of the ongoing dispute and what it means for online users in China:

What happens when users in China now search on Google?

They are redirected from Google.cn to Google.com.hk, a region of China that is not under censorship. Before Monday, Google self-censored searches for issues of a sexual nature or that were politically sensitive under Chinese law.

Although Google is now no longer censoring, Chinese state censors are still filtering and blocking searches through a system known as "The Great Firewall."

A search in Chinese on the terms "Tiananmen Square massacre," a reference to the crackdown on pro-democracy activists in 1989, or "Falun Gong," a religious group illegal in China, and this message appeared on Tuesday: "The Connection was reset- connection to server was reset while the page was loading." Then users find access to Google.com.hk severed for a few minutes -- local Web users refer to this as a "wrist slap" for trying to find such terms.

Searches on the same terms in China in English on Tuesday occasionally were successful, but often resulted in the same blocked page.