Independance for Taiwan? Tibet? Falun Gong? Try typing those into the upcoming Google in China, and you'll come up empty.

The Google capitulation:

Web search leader Google Inc. said on Tuesday that it was introducing a new service for China that seeks to avoid a confrontation with the government by restricting access to services to which users contribute such as e-mail, chat rooms and blogs.

The new Chinese service at http://www.google.cn will offer a self-censored version of Google's popular search system that restricts access to thousands of terms and Web sites.

Hot topics might include issues like independence for Taiwan or Tibet or outlawed spiritual group Falun Gong.

In seeking to compete more aggressively in the world's second biggest Internet market -- where Google has lost ground to a more popular home-grown search company Baidu Inc. -- the company is facing the toughest challenge yet to its corporate mantra of "don't do evil."

In a compromise that trades off Google's desire to provide universal access to information in order to exist within local laws, Google will not offer its Gmail e-mail service, Web log publishing services or chat rooms -- tools of self-expression that could be used for political or social protest.

So much for universal access to information via Google, at least in China.