Google has issued an official statement regarding its business operations in China, specifically its Chinese search portal – Google.cn.
Google told Chinese authorities that it will stop censoring search results on the Chinese Google site. And depending on how things will turn out, Google might later be forced to shut down Google.cn.
In a long post at its official blog site, Google gave three recent discoveries/incidents that prompted its decision to stop censoring search results from its Chinese site.
The first one being the fact, it was found out that recent attacks on its corporate IT infrastructure originated from China and that those attacks were not just meant for Google alone. Some other business companies were also targeted.
Making things worsts is that based on Google’s investigation, it was also found out that the main objective of the attackers was to access the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. Although the attackers were not successful in achieving their target, thanks to Google’s high level of infrastructure security on its products, two Gmail accounts were jeopardized although the activity was limited only to non-essential matters and not the content of the emails.
And worst of all has got to be the fact that Google also found out that even accounts of U.S., China and Europe human rights activities were accessed by third parties through malware, phising and other malicious activities.
Given these conditions, Google has no recourse but to stop censoring the search results on its Chinese site. But that is of course if Google and the Chinese authorities will agree. If not, then that’s the time when Google will be force to close its Chinese site.
