White House to China: We’re With Google on This One

A ratcheting up in the Google-versus-China fight: The White House has officially endorsed the search giant’s position.

Here’s White House spokesman Robert Gibbs today, per MarketWatch:

“We support [Google's] action…in a decision to no longer censor searches that happen using the [Google] platform,” Gibbs told reporters. He added that “our concern is with actions that threaten the universal rights of a free Internet.”

I’ll leave it to geopolitical tea leaf readers to decipher whether the White House’s position on this means that much for Sino-American relations. But it’s not a huge surprise: The affectionate relationship between Google (GOOG) and this administration has been documented many times already.