• September 2002: Access to Google's site is completely blocked in China for about two weeks. It appears the domain name was -- a move the Chinese government may have been behind. Soon thereafter, signs of begin to surface. Even the brainiacs who got all of right can't quite figure out what's going on.

Google and China: The Censorship Begins

• January 2006: Google relents and , a specialized version of its search site that filters out pornographic and "politically sensitive" results. The company acknowledges that the filtering "clearly compromises [its] mission," but notes that "failing to offer Google search at all to a fifth of the world's population ... [would do so] far more severely."

• March 2008: China during riots in Tibet. It isn't the first time China has , and it won't be the last.

• March 2009: Fast-forward one year, and YouTube . (Did I call that one or what?) A Chinese official denies his nation is afraid of the Internet; a wisecracking writer . This ban, by most accounts, is still pretty much in place today.