Earlier this week, Google made the bold step to shut down its Chinese search operations due to heavy-handed censorship and accusations of computer hacking that originated in China. The People's Daily fired back at Google with full force in a front page story. "Google is not a virgin when it comes to values. Its cooperation and collusion with the U.S. intelligence and security agencies is well-known...All this makes one wonder," wrote the paper. "Thinking about the United States’ big efforts in recent years to engage in Internet war, perhaps this could be an exploratory pre-dawn battle."

Google may have been the first, but it certainly won't be the last company to pull out of China. The Washington Post is now reporting that GoDaddy.com will no longer register domain names in China. The reason for GoDaddy's decision comes from invasive new requirements that the Chinese government has implemented for those that wish to register a .cn domain name.

According to Washington Post, registrants must provide signed registration forms, a business registration number, and a color headshot to the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC). GoDaddy was also asked to retroactively obtain this information for individuals and organizations that had already registered .cn domain names.

GoDaddy, the largest registrar of domain names on the internet, says that it can no longer be persuaded to comply with Chinese regulations. "We believe that many of the current abuses of the Internet originating in China are due to a lack of enforcement against criminal activities by the Chinese government," said GoDaddy general counsel Christine Jones at the Congressional-Executive Commission on China.

"Our experience as been that China is focused on using the internet to monitor and control the legitimate activities of its citizens, rather than penalizing those who commit Internet-related crimes," Jones added.

GoDaddy was founded in 1997 and currently maintains over 40 million domain names.