At 7am Beijing time Google released a statement yesterday stating that they had a “highly sophisticated and targeted attack on their (our) corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google.”
Google included in their statement that other US companies had been under attack too. It’s no surprise to Google being under attack from hackers. However Google’s Chief Legal Officer David Drummond wrote that the attacks were aimed at identifying advocates for human rights in China.
Google entered the Chinese market and took the decision to censor itself back in 2006. However Google have now decided to change its policy of censoring itself as a result of these attacks and fully open its doors to 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.”
Back of Google Logo at Beijing - Will Google be forced to turn it's back on China?
There are some fantastic articles on this subject from Search Engine Land and the BBC but we’d love your views on this subject. Do you think Google are doing the right thing? Will Google be forced to turn it’s back on China?
Image Credit: Creative Commons Attribution: by andreweland
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January 13th, 2010 at 5:17 pm
I think the implication is that the attack was somehow sanctioned by the Chinese Government, although Google won’t say this explicitly (maybe I shouldn’t either!). Whether or not that’s the case, it’s difficult to see how the Chinese Government can allow Google to operate uncensored considering the harsh censorship prevalent in other media. Google pulling out of China is, therefore, inevitable.
January 13th, 2010 at 6:01 pm
There’s a lot of talk about whether this was a business decision (Baidu still rules the roost, so they were technically ‘losing’) or whether the attack just crossed a line that made them act..
Personally, I hope it’s was them finally just ‘doing the right thing’. Like Danny Sullivan, I was disappointed that they bowed to China’s demands and censored the results in the first place seemingly going against the “Don’t be Evil” motto.
Would be interesting to hear China’s response. I doubt they’d find a compromise.
January 14th, 2010 at 9:13 pm
interesting article from forbes that supports the ‘failed business model’ position.