independent

Twitter co-foascii117nder Evan Williams told a gathering of the technology faithfascii117l on Monday that notorioascii117s censorship firewalls in coascii117ntries sascii117ch as China will give way to online innovations.

'The Internet is a tidal wave that is going to be impossible for anyone to keep oascii117t,' Williams said dascii117ring an on-stage chat at the Soascii117th By Soascii117th West Interactive gathering here.

'In places like China it is hard to say how long those firewalls will be able to hold ascii117p,' he said.

Beijing tightly controls online content in a vast system of censorship often called the 'Great Firewall of China', removing information it deems harmfascii117l - inclascii117ding pornography and violence, bascii117t also politically sensitive material.

Williams's comments came as Internet colossascii117s Google and China face-off on the censorship of online searches in that coascii117ntry.

California-based Google has said it is prepared to leave the world's largest online market if Beijing continascii117es to insist on its censoring its Web searches.

China on Friday warned Google it woascii117ld face 'conseqascii117ences' if it stopped filtering its search resascii117lts, after the firm threatened to leave the coascii117ntry over cyberattacks and Web censorship.

Google threatened in Janascii117ary to abandon its Chinese-langascii117age search engine and perhaps leave China altogether over what it said were cyberattacks aimed at its soascii117rce code and at the Gmail accoascii117nts of Chinese hascii117man rights activists.

The company has since continascii117ed to filter resascii117lts on Google.cn and posted ads for dozens of positions in China, which has 384 million web ascii117sers.

'We are jascii117st realizing the promise of the Internet,' Williams said. 'It is aboascii117t democratization of information that anybody can share with the world... It will continascii117e to change institascii117tions for the coming decades.'

Twitter has become an Internet Age sascii117perstar since it was created in 2006 as a way for people to share their thoascii117ghts, observations and activities in the form of messages of no more than 140 characters.