Google says it might end operations in China over compromise of dissidents’ e-mail accounts
By Michael Liedtke, APTuesday, January 12, 2010
E-mail leak has Google threatening to leave China
SAN FRANCISCO — Google Inc. will stop censoring its search results in China and may pull out of the country after discovering that computers hackers had tricked human rights activists into opening their e-mail accounts to outsiders.
The change-of-heart announced Tuesday heralds a major shift for Google, which has repeatedly said it will obey Chinese laws that require some politically and socially sensitive issues to be blocked from search results that are available in other countries
Google disclosed in a blog post that it had detected a “highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China.” Further investigation revealed that “a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists,” Google said in the post written by Chief Legal Officer David Drummond.
Google did not specifically accuse the Chinese government. But the company added that it is “no longer willing to continue censoring our results” on its Chinese search engine, as the government requires. Google says the decision could force it to shut down its Chinese site and its offices in the country.
It’s unclear how much of a blow to its business Google would suffer by pulling out of China. The country has the world’s largest population of Internet users but research firm Analysys International said last year that Baidu.com handled 62 percent of Web searches in China compared with 29 percent for Google.
Clothilde Le Coz, Washington director for Reporters Without Borders, called Google’s willingness to stop censoring results a positive step, but added it doesn’t necessarily mean more information will be available to the average Chinese person.
“The Chinese government is one of the most efficient in terms of censoring the Web,” she said. The media watchdog group has long criticized Google and other Internet companies for caving to China’s censorship regime.
A spokesman for the Chinese consulate in San Francisco had no immediate comment.
Google first agreed to censor search results in China in 2006 when it created a version of its search engine bearing China’s Web suffix, “.cn.” Previously, Chinese-language results had been available through the company’s main Google.com site.
To obtain its Chinese license, Google agreed to omit Web content that the country’s government found objectionable. At the time Google executives said they struggled with how to reconcile the censorship concessions with the company’s motto of “don’t be evil.” By then Yahoo had come under fire for giving the Chinese government account information of a Chinese journalist who was later convicted for violating state secrecy laws.
AP Technology Writers Barbara Ortutay in New York and Jessica Mintz in Seattle contributed to this story.
On the Net:
Google post: bit.ly/6vGb9S
Tags: Asia, California, China, Communication Technology, Computing And Information Technology, East Asia, Greater China, Internet Technology, North America, Political Activism, Political Issues, San Francisco, Software, United States
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January 12, 2010: 6:49 pm
I will be shocked if Google really follows through with pulling out China Operations because of the compromised emails. I think Google is just trying to win points with the US Gov in an effort to gain traction in other areas they have having problems in , such as the copy righted materials being scanned and broadcast to the world. I asked a few people here at the John R. Carlisle Institute of they thought Google would really pull out of China and no one thought they would really do it. Time will tell and we will see, probably sooner than later. John R. Carlisle |
John R. Carlisle