Google: A new approach to China

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Google announced in a blog post today that it would no longer censor its Chinese search engine, even if it means pulling out of China. In the post Google revealed details of a cyber attack originating from China that it and at least 20 other companies experienced last month.

The primary objective was accessing Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. It also found that dozens of other Gmail accounts owned by human rights activists worldwide were compromised, most likely due to phishing scams or malware. This is a big deal and could not only affect Google and the tech community, but have an impact on global politics too.

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

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