The Wall Street Journal and New York Times have both reported flowers being left outside Google’s offices in several Chinese cities, including Beijing, following the news that the internet giant may pull out of China. The news of Google's announcement earlier this week is all over the net so we won't rehash it here, although you can’t read Google’s official statement without a VPN since, predictably, it’s blocked. Oh the irony. Shanghaiist has a good summary of Google's decision in case you've somehow managed to miss it, while Chinageeks and chinaSMACK have translated some Chinese online reactions, which run the gamut from nationalistic to sadly resigned.

The whole thing seems to be the result of a huge misunderstanding - just last year the Deputy Chief of Xinhua News Agency explained: "Our country's Internet situation is unique. Compared to all kinds of restrictions in foreign countries, China has the most open Internet in the world." The Guardian has published a little timeline to illustrate this point.

In other news, late last year we wrote about rewards being offered for tips leading to the closure of pornographic websites. ChinaSMACK reported this week on a fine, outstanding student from Shanxi who has managed to cash in by helping authorities in their quest to close thousands of sites.

According to the chinaSMACK post: “A university student from Shanxi Province, Little Zhang, as a result of submitting a letter reporting over 32 obscene and pornographic websites, received a 10,000 yuan big reward. In his reporting letter, Little Zhan claimed that pornographic websites have caused 6 of the 8 school mates in his dorm room to have had sexual experience, with two of them having had girls have abortions.”

Who would have thought? Young Chinese adults having sexual experiences? Shocking! Hopefully Little Zhang’s efforts will help prevent any more young adults having experiences of the wrong kind.

Global Times reported today on a meeting in Beijing earlier this week between "the legal team of the Aizhixing Institute and a group of webmasters whose gay awareness sites have been forced to close." It seems the sites have been victims of the "anti-porn" campaign.

The People’s Daily reported earlier this week that Xinjiang is, very slowly, coming back online. Sort of.

Finally, local search engines have been having their own problems of late. Earlier this week the popular Chinese search engine Baidu was hacked by a group calling themselves the "Iranian Cyber Army."

Oh, and the Internet Movie Database is now inaccessible in China.