Google said the hackers had tried to access the Gmail email accounts of Chinese human rights activists, but only managed to access two unidentified accounts, and then only headlines and other data such as when an account was created.
"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," Google said in a statement.
"We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China."
The company also said that as part of their investigation they discovered that:
at least twenty other large companies from a wide range of businesses--including the Internet, finance, technology, media and chemical sectors--have been similarly targeted. We are currently in the process of notifying those companies, and we are also working with the relevant U.S. authorities.
I have a tear in my eye... God Bless You Google!
ReplyDeleteI hope they follow through.
My guess is they were just getting their ass kicked by the government-connected Baidu and thought it'd be better to "declare (moral) victory" than admit they can't get their business model to work over there.
ReplyDeleteI suppose this means that when the US govt starts asking google to do their censorship dirty work for them, Google will up and leave the United States?