Google abandons China

Now Google itself has been the victim of attacks, and by their estimate it was a large and organized attack against Google and as many as 20 other large companies. It seems the sole goal of these attacks was to gain access to the Google accounts of human rights activists. These people who have been advocating human rights in China were targeted, and while Google believes the attach did not achieve its objective, at least two of the accounts were compromised. Even then the attackers, Google believes, were only able to access information about when the accounts were created, and subjects of email, not contents.

Google lays out in their blog post that they had, when approaching china decided to monitor the situation closely, and if required change their approach if they are unable to meet their objectives. Well, now the “renegotiations” have begun, Google has decided to remove all filters from these Chinese domain, and discuss with the government about where the deal needs to go.

With the increasing number of restrictions that aim to limit the freedom on internet in China, Google has decided to take this bold move, knowing full well that this might, and it most probably will mean the end of in China.

While Google may be taking a noble stance, and I should, the true sufferers are those who have become reliant on Google services in the meanwhile. While it is what Google hopes for, there is little chance of Google being allowed to operate an unfiltered search engine in China. Good bye Google.cn!