Google vrs China

[ceyfer]

E-mail leak has Google threatening to leave China

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

A new approach to China

Like many other well-known organizations, we face cyber attacks of varying degrees on a regular basis. In mid-December, we detected a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google. However, it soon became clear that what at first appeared to be solely a security incident--albeit a significant one--was something quite different.

First, this attack was not just on Google. As part of our investigation we have discovered that at least twenty other large companies from a wide range of businesses--including the Internet, finance, technology, media and chemical sectors--have been similarly targeted. We are currently in the process of notifying those companies, and we are also working with the relevant U.S. authorities.

Second, we have evidence to suggest that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. Based on our investigation to date we believe their attack did not achieve that objective. Only two Gmail accounts appear to have been accessed, and that activity was limited to account information (such as the date the account was created) and subject line, rather than the content of emails themselves.

Third, as part of this investigation but independent of the attack on Google, we have discovered that the accounts of dozens of U.S.-, China- and Europe-based Gmail users who are advocates of human rights in China appear to have been routinely accessed by third parties. These accounts have not been accessed through any security breach at Google, but most likely via phishing scams or malware placed on the users' computers.

Google Response

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.

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References :
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100112/...c_google_china
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/...Google+Blog%29
http://www.nartv.org/2010/01/12/googles-new-approach/
http://www.uscc.gov/researchpapers/2..._16Oct2009.pdf

[hellnoire]

Nice to hear, since I've often though Google's all about the money. To do this now.. I'll give them a thumbs up. I'll still use Scroogle for the moment, at least until they lower the data retention time.

[BTOR]

nice info..

[safeguy]

Interesting.....I'm actually intrigued by this although it doesn't really affect me....so should we say "Hooray" to China users or should we say "Oh No"???

[LAHarry]

High praise to Google & pray for netizens in Mainland China.

[kavinraja]

Hope my account in google won't be compromised.
@Hellnoire: Google is indeed a money making machine, but i feel they are better than M$.

[shan]

not in china, their stock levels have gone dowwn to .6 while there search engin bindu or some thing has 6.5 :O google .6 that like

[bornfree]

a good decesion from the part of google

[safeguy]

Google is indeed a money making machine, but i feel they are better than M$.

The keyword here is 'feel'....in actual fact, both Google & MS are the same devils in different boats

[hellnoire]

Well put Safeguy, that's the way I've felt for a while.