SAN FRANCISCO - Google Inc. stopped censoring the Internet for China by shifting its search engine off the mainland Monday but said it will maintain other operations in the country. The maneuver attempts to balance Google's disdain for China's Internet rules with the company's desire to profit from an explosively growing market.

Google's decision comes after an impasse pitting the world's most powerful Internet company against the government of the world's most populous country. But it's not clear Google has resolved the standoff that began Jan. 12. That's when Google said it would no longer adhere to China's requirement that it keep some Internet results out of its citizens' view.

Visitors to Google's old service for China, Google.cn, are now being redirected to the Chinese-language service based in Hong Kong, where Google does not censor search results. The Hong Kong page heralded the shift Monday with this announcement: "Welcome to Google Search in China's new home." The site also began displaying search results in the simplified Chinese characters used in mainland China.

However, the results can't all be accessed inside China, because government filters restrict links that can be clicked by mainland audiences.

Maintaining a toehold

Google plans to keep its engineering and sales offices in China so it can keep a technological toehold in the country and continue to sell ads for the Chinese-language version of its search engine in the United States. The company, based in Mountain View, Calif., also intends to keep its mapping and music services on Google.cn.

But the revolt against censorship threatens to crimp Google's growth, particularly if China retaliates by making it more difficult for the company to do business in the country. The Chinese government could react by blocking access to Google's services, much as it has completely shut off Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, which is owned by Google.

It's unclear whether Google's attempt to skirt China's censorship rules by using Hong Kong as a back door will provoke more acrimony. China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology did not issue an immediate comment early Tuesday in Beijing.

"Figuring out how to make good on our promise to stop censoring search on Google.cn has been hard," David Drummond, Google's top lawyer, wrote in a Monday blog posting. "We want as many people in the world as possible to have access to our services, including users in mainland China, yet the Chinese government has been crystal clear throughout our discussions that self-censorship is a non-negotiable legal requirement."