Google to end censorship in China, may pull out

From CNET News.com: Google no longer intends to censor search results in China, and if the Chinese government balks, it may take its servers and go home.

The stunning change in Google's policy toward doing business in China--which was always a complicated dance--came after Google discovered that it and other businesses were the victims of "a highly sophisticated and targeted attack" aimed at gathering information about human rights activists. It is not clear whether the Chinese government was behind the attacks, which Google said in a blog post were also directed against other U.S. companies.

Google released a lengthy blog post authored by David Drummond, senior vice president of corporate development and chief legal officer, Tuesday afternoon, discussing the decision to review its policy toward 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."

Google entered China in 2006 with the launch of Google.cn. It knew at the time that it would be forced to censor search results in accordance with the policies of the Chinese government, but believed it could live up to its famous "don't be evil" pledge without passing up the business opportunity in the fast-growing Chinese market by notifying Web searchers that their results had been censored due to local laws.

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