Spy Review

News is rife that Google is planning to shut down its China operations primarily because of a ‘highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China’, says the company in its blog.

Google has refused to allow censorship of its internet searches in China, particularly after a cyber attack on the emails of Chinese human rights activists. Reuters’ reports ‘Secretary of State Hillary Clinton plans to help citizens in other countries, including China, get uncensored access to the Internet, and last week she met top executives from companies including Google, Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O), Twitter and Cisco Systems Inc (CSCO.O), an aide said on Tuesday.’

David Drummond, chief legal officer of Google, said, Google will ‘review the feasibility of our business operations in China.’ He went on, ‘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.’

Till recently Google was cooperating with China, albeit reluctantly, in blocking socially sensitive issues which could be accessed. However, recently it came to light that there had been hacking attacks from within China compromising the security of at least 20 US Companies.

While Google stands to lose revenue from the Chinese, the general population will lose out on Google’s reach.

Via: FT