Google Threatening To Leave China Over Hacking, Email Leak

UPDATE 4:31 PM ET: Get latest updates on Google's China developments on our liveblog here.

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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.

An excerpt from Google's blog post about Google.cn:

We launched Google.cn in January 2006 in the belief that the benefits of increased access to information for people in China and a more open Internet outweighed our discomfort in agreeing to censor some results. At the time we made clear that "we will carefully monitor conditions in China, including new laws and other restrictions on our services. If we determine that we are unable to achieve the objectives outlined we will not hesitate to reconsider our approach to China."

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.

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.

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AP Technology Writers Barbara Ortutay in New York and Jessica Mintz in Seattle contributed to this story.

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On the Net:

Google post: http://bit.ly/6vGb9S

Comments

[wwbd78]

09:02 PM on 02/25/2010

March is almost upon us, but miraculously, Google is still in China and still, gasp, censoring search results. I think the threat to leave China is somehow design to distract us from the privacy- invading Google Buzz. I am still waiting for Google to fulfill its "do no evil" pledge. Still waiting...

[nidaye]

06:25 PM on 01/14/2010

Westerners are always threatening to boycott products made in China. We Chinese welcome this idea, but do you know why it will never happen? Since the major profits (>80%?) were taken by Western corporations, and then the western politicians were controlled by them. This is not a good deal to ordinary Chinese people. Please boycott, then we will take our environment back.

Censoring is everywhere, even in US. My post is very likely not going through since it is different from what the main stream media says. The difference is, In China, people know this fact, and if they
want, they could find the information. In US, for example, Americans falsely believe they know everything, but they don't. For example, two days ago Chinese government announced they successfully intercepted missiles which is quite significant considering the 50% success rate for US, but CNN never mentioned it at all. We don't mind you know so little, but please be smart and not to launch wars because you know too little like Iraq war...

[BeemaInc]

07:46 PM on 01/13/2010

A tongue in cheek update on the China situation from Google's Android, http://blog.beema.com.

[ojim]

07:43 PM on 01/13/2010

Yes! I sure hope you guys mean it.

[mistykeymusic]

05:06 PM on 01/13/2010

I get attacked/port scanned by China on a regular basis. That's what firewalls are for.
Google - stay in China and tough it out.

[against]

04:50 PM on 01/13/2010

Great to see Google standing up against PRC. Now, how about standing up to US government too.

[joebaggadonuts]

03:57 PM on 01/13/2010

I guess this means that Google will have to revise their goal of cataloging all the world's information to cataloging all the world's free information. They have already lost Fox and AP, and now China is about to leave. That means that the other 5+billion of us are on our own. Good riddance to bad rubbish, I say. Who needs or wants to be limited to slanted "facts" when we have the truth and shared opinion? China thinks it can go with its version of the truth and win against the rest of the world who is free to get the real truth? Maybe I'm wrong but it seems like a losing bet for China. Sun Tsu expects winning Generals to know Heaven and Earth, Self and Other, and the Way. How can the generals win without this information? Maybe China's plan is to let the select few will see it and they direct the others based on this knowledge. Can they win against 5X their numbers who know (or at least have access to the actual truth)? I suppose in their hubris they assume so. Short term, this is a loss for Google and long term for world peace.

[fedupscot]

02:58 PM on 01/13/2010

Goodgle can make an incredible statement by pulling out of China. But, if they don't follow through because of money they will be considered weak and I'll lose so much respect for them. We've been so long without a hero.

[Mohamed Idris]

02:46 PM on 01/13/2010

To prove my point, the stock price of Baidu, (NASDAQ: BIDU) has expereinced what seems to be a fourfold increase since the beginning of 2009 to today. And to me, if the company's financials are right, it may even go higher.

THIS IS NOT A STOCK TIP, DON'T TAKE YOUR MONEY AND INVEST JUST BECAUSE I COMMENTED ABOUT THIS STOCK, DO YOUR OWN HOMEWORK.

[Mohamed Idris]

02:42 PM on 01/13/2010

While pulling out of China may be a decision that was made in the best interest of the company, it also means that you are giving up a huge market. 29% of internet searches done in a country, especially when that country is the most populous in the world, is a lot. It only goes to show that Baidu could profit tremendously from this extraction.

[satanlite]

01:34 PM on 01/13/2010

I wonder if the managers at Google who decided to go into China in the first place REALLY thought something like this wouldn't happen, or felt it was an experiment and they could bail if necessary. For them to believe this would not happen is to be truly naive.

[ReichWingKaput]

01:21 PM on 01/13/2010

Yeah.
Like I believe this story.
Google just got what it wanted.
A headline.

Six months from now,
buried on some back page,
will be a story about a new, lucrative China deal for Google
and a paragraph about how China promised to be good.

Don't Be Evil.
Indeed!

[theaetetus]

11:58 AM on 01/13/2010

American and western nations need to be a little more bold when dealing with china.
in the same way that American consumers need to be a little more bold with financial institutions.

[NineLives]

11:52 AM on 01/13/2010

If you feel threatened by Chinese hacking, one small thing all can do is use a portal like opendns.com instead of your ISP's DNS where it allows you to block domains like the .cn domain for China.

It won't cure all problems, but it will help.

[notwired]

11:50 AM on 01/13/2010

Like the Chinese care! LMAO