WebProNews

After an eventful week in the ongoing Google/China saga, the Chinese Foreign Ministry blunted stated that Google has to play ball to do business there.

Ministry spokesperson Liu Jianchao said yesterday that while foreign companies are welcome to operate in China, they must obey Chinese laws, including laws regarding freedom of expression, the Associated Press reports.

The comments from the Ministry, abrupt as they are, come shortly after Sergey Brin acknowledged that Google had compromised its principles by bowing to Chinese authority on censorship issues.

Google became the third major search company, after Yahoo! and MSN's near immediate acquiescence, to offer a filtered search engine operating from servers within Chinese borders.

Chinese censors routinely block out content related to democracy, free speech, Tiananmen Square, and other topics that are charged politically.

Also, it appeared that China put the final nail in the coffin for access to Google.com, the uncensored website that sometime earlier this week was discovered to be inaccessible from within the country. Within China, the only Google option is Google.cn, or as it is known there, "Guge."

Jason L. Miller is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.