Google may leave China over attack; Microsoft not affected |
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Google said this afternoon that it will no longer censor its search results in China and may be forced to leave the county after uncovering "a highly sophisticated and targeted attack" alleged to have originated there. The company says it believes the attack was aimed at accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human-rights advocates.
The declaration could reshape the technology landscape in the world's largest Internet market. Microsoft, which operates Hotmail and other online services in the country, said this evening that it has no indication that any of its email properties were compromised. A spokesman gave no further information about the company's plans.
Although Google did not openly connect the attack to the Chinese government, the New York Times quotes unnamed people with knowledge of the situation saying that the company "had enough evidence to justify its actions."
"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," wrote David Drummond, Google's chief legal officer, in a blog post. "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."
The major Internet search engines have censored search results inside the country in a concession to the Chinese government, to gain access to the market.
As noted by CNet News.com's Ina Fried, the decision by Google to no longer censor results there creates a delicate situation for Microsoft and Yahoo, which would be in a position to capitalize on a Google pullout but would come under intense criticism for continuing to censor search results.
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