We all know what is going on with Google and China. But a few days ago we reported a weird occurrence where Chinese Google users cannot access Google.com not even through the google.com/ncr URL which should give international users access to Google.com.

Rubie from the Google web search team posted a thread at Google Web Search Help explaining that this issue is indeed a bug. He said:

There is currently a bug on the google.com.hk homepage. When users based in China click the “Google.com in English” link at the bottom of the page they are redirected back to the google.com.hk domain. This bug is accidental, and it should be fixed within a few days.

The issue is, when users either click on “Google.com in English” or go to google.com/ncr they are being redirected to Google Hong Kong, which is not the expected behavior. So this should be resolved soon.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.