Google has officially shut down it's Chinese search engine, google.cn, and is now redirecting all traffic to google.com.hk, it's Hong Kong search engine. So Google made good on it's threat technically, but Hong Kong is under Chinese control, and if Google really wanted to embarrass the Chinese, they could have redirected the traffic to google.com.tw, where calls for independence and personal freedoms are much louder. But they didn't go that far, so perhaps they still intend to reopen the site after reaching an agreement with the Chinese government.

But what exactly would an agreement look like? What assurances could Google possibly expect?  In some ways it's a puzzling move, it leaves Google looking like an abused spouse, packing bags and moving out, but staying with the abuser's sister temporarily. Just in case.

It's likely that the Chinese government has already offered some kind of hush money to Google, or a rebate on future bribes owed, however you want to look at it. This would be standard operating procedure in an economy where bribery is key to making the wheels turn. But obviously this tactic has failed up to this point, so they could increase the offer to the "you'd be crazy to say no" level. They could also increase their filtering effort on requests to google.com.hk from within the mainland. Or maybe this is just a show for the American audience, and Google executives have already decided to reopen operations after a symbolic shutdown.

But what happens if the two can't make up? It's hard to believe that the Chinese government will resist the urge to censor google.com.hk, where it's still possible to look up such forbidden topics as the Tiananmen square massacre. But that could lead to yet another PR debacle, and given the recent stories about such things as banning consumption of dogs and cats, perhaps Chinese officials are craving a little more of their recent Summer Olympics buzz, that feeling of being accepted and respected internationally, a halo effect which has undoubtedly faded considerably.

But there's another action the Chinese government could order, it would be easier technically, and would be much less likely to face press scrutiny: DNS Balkanization.

Balkanization is when a structure breaks down into smaller parts which are often hostile toward each other. Think Russia and some of its former republics like Chechnya and Ukraine. Or Yugoslavia which is now Serbia, Slovenia and Croatia.

And the acronym DNS stands for the Domain Name System, it's a hierarchical network that provides a mapping service, converting domain names like "amazon.com" or "apple.com" to IP addresses. IP addresses are just strings of numbers joined with periods that look like this: 192.168.5.45

These IP addresses are the real deal. The computers that use the internet have to use them to communicate, the domain names are just a convenient abstraction layer for us humans. So when Google redirected their traffic from google.cn to google.com.tw, they changed the IP address in the DNS from whatever it was before to 74.125.95.160, an IP that appears to be in California. The requests are then redirected from there to one the six google.com.hk servers listed right now.

But that's the thing. Chinese officials could order their primary domain name servers to change that IP to anything else they want. Perhaps the Chinese will route all of google.cn's traffic to Baidu's IPs instead. Baidu is a native Chinese search engine which gladly censors results, and many nationalists would love to see this happen.

I mentioned before that DNS servers are hierarchical. The DNS was designed to survive things like nuclear war, so each DNS server has a degree of autonomy, and can run independently of the rest of the hierarchy. So a hierarchy exists, but it's voluntary at an extremely granular level. Google owns the google.cn domain name, so it has the authority to tell the rest of the DNS that it now points to the IPs for google.com.hk. But if the Chinese government really wants to, they can force every computer within China to see Baidu instead of Google. Baidu would become the only search engine of consequence in China.

And if the Chinese government bestows this boon upon Baidu, a raucous gang of Chinese companies are sure to follow, demanding the same gift: Elimination of international competition by stealing their Internet traffic domestically. Retaliation from various governments around the world would be inevitable, and the balkanization could spin out of control, routing traffic for any external source of desire to government-approved domestic alternatives. If you think there's a problem with piracy of music and movies right now, just wait until itunes.com leads to a different pirate media vendor in every country around the globe. And if you think there's already too much politically-motivated censorship, the balkanized Internet will be a nightmare of disinformation and propaganda, massaged daily by every repressive regime in the world.

This kind of Internet Balkanization could well endanger the massive societal and financial gains that have resulted from unrestrained global communication.  I outlined a similar, but more financially motivated DNS Balkanization scenario in a white paper a couple of years ago, but I didn't expect the condition to degrade this quickly.

Right now I can contact just about anyone in China (that speaks English and wants to talk to me), and have a wide-ranging, friendly discussion. I could tell them how much I dislike my government's two-party system, and how I think their one-party system is no better. My new Chinese friend might tell me that he loves his country, just not corrupt officials. I could tell them that I respect most Chinese people that I've met, but their government's heavy-handed tactics are despotic and sooo last millennium, and that I really wish they would do something about it. And he might tell me I'm the skillet calling the kettle black, or whatever the comparable Chinese expression sounds like transliterated. But that's the point, we'd get the chance to talk it out.

My new Chinese friend might regret me singling him out, he could get a visit from a government reeducation specialist if he agreed with me, and we were being monitored at the time. But that's not too likely, there's simply too many calls, too many people talking to each other for any bureaucracy to get its arms around. But that conversation could happen today. I'm just not sure it'll be possible in a few more years if the Internet is Balkanized. And that saddens me.

The Internet represents a great opportunity for people all over the world to outgrow the archaic social control mechanisms that keep us from understanding each other. Tyrannical governments, terrorists and and religious fundamentalists all over the world are working hard every day to prevent people from understanding each other, and the result is almost always tragedy. It would be a massive loss for us all if the DNS became a tool of the despots, propagandists and charlatans. I hope Chinese officials agree.