Google today appears to have caved in to pressure from Chinese authorities by permitting state censorship on its Google.cn service.   “In order to operate from China, we have removed some content from the search results available on Google.cn, in response to local law, regulation or policy,” the company said in a statement issued yesterday.

The deal will exclude content related to such sensitive topics as the Tianemen Square massacre, Tibetan independance or the Taiwan issue being returned to searchers using Google.cn.  The U turn shows the importance of the Chinese market to Google, where the leading search property is Baidu, locally developed and purchased last year by Yahoo!.  Google also announced that its email and blogging services will not be available in China for the forseeable future.