Google no longer bends

A couple of years ago the internet giant received a good deal of criticism because their Chinese version of Google was censored. But according to them it was “better to provide a search engine partly censored, than nothing at all”.

They were, and are, probably right. No one denies the sheer difficulties tied to working in and with China, especially when this concerns freedoms and knowledge that have not been state-approved. “Beijing” has now crossed the line.

Breaching Google’s security measures for breaking into Google users’ accounts, mostly belonging to people who are active in human-rights affairs one way or another, was part of putting the toe firmly over the line. According to Google it is very unlikely that hackers succeeded in doing this, but it was enough to make the company change its mind, which could very well lead to backing out of the Asian country.

Via another route of “phising scams or malware” hackers are said to have had more success in hacking Gmail accounts.  These cyber attacks were, however, not just directed at people; also at companies and businesses, which naturally include their potential valuable information and knowledge.

This al has led Google to reconsider their practices in China. In the coming weeks they will be holding talks with government officials about what is going to happen next:

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.

You can read Google’s own report here.