In a just published blog post, Google strongly suggests that it is holding the Chinese government responsible for a recent spate of hackings of Chinese dissidents’ GMail (and other non-google services) accounts. As a result Google is changing its policy vis-a-vis its relationship with China. It will no longer serve censored search results.

The post further states that Google realizes and is prepared to accept that this may be the end of its business within the country.

Purely from a user’s perspective, it’s great to see the internet behemoth making an effort to stick to its principles. Whatever the motivation, and even if Eric Schmidt still doesn’t understand the importance of privacy, this is a reassuring point towards the “don’t be evil” tally.

Edit: Laughing Squid reports that Google has already stopped censoring google.cn.

Edit: Some Chinese reactions.