Google ready to say 'zài jiàn' (goodbye) to China

Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 13 January 2010 06:07

Your IT - Home IT

Following "a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China", Google has said it is no longer prepared to censor search results on Google.cn and is prepared to pull out of China if necessary.

Google has revealed that during December it detected a significant attack on its infrastructure originating from China, and an investigation revealed that other large companies (nearly three dozen of them, according to some reports) were also targeted.

The attacks included attempts to access the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists, though only two such accounts were apparently accessed in the attack.

In addition, "dozens" of accounts used by human rights activists "appear to have been routinely accessed by third parties" according to Google. It is thought that malware or phishing attacks were used to gain access to those accounts.

Although Google's statement did not implicate the Chinese government, it can easily be read as doing so.

Google gave a reminder that its original decision to agree to the censorship of Google.cn came with a caveat that it would "carefully monitor conditions in China, including new laws and other restrictions on our services. If we determine that we are unable to achieve the objectives outlined we will not hesitate to reconsider our approach to China."

The statement - issued by David Drummond, the company's senior vice president for corporate development and chief legal officer - went on to say "These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered - combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web - have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China."

It is also telling that the company found it necessary to state that "this move was driven by our executives in the United States, without the knowledge or involvement of our employees in China".

Google came in for criticism from people concerned about the human rights situation in China when it first came to an accommodation with that country's government. Similar criticisms have been made of other US companies including Disney, News Corporation, Time Warner, and Yahoo.