Google decides to turn against Chinese government

Posted by: Gareth Jenkins, Head of Development 13 Jan 10 - 10:53AM | World Wide Web

News sites and the blogosphere are awash with the news today that Google has signalled that it will no longer co-operate with the Chinese government in censoring its search results in a move that will very likely end the company's operations within China. The move occurred after Google discovered that the Gmail accounts of many Chinese human rights activists had been hacked in what it called a "sophisticated and targeted" cyber attack originating from within the country.

This is a very significant piece of news in that Google is now saying enough is enough with what is widely regarded as at least Chinese Government tolerated - if not actively Government led - hacking of major Internet infrastructure that has been growing over the past decade. It is a move which could cost Google heavily in financial terms, with the company estimated to make about $600 million from its Chinese operations in 2010.

Google has been heavily criticized in the West by many commentators for years now for actively working with the Chinese authorities to censor their search results, allowing only "Government sanctioned" content to make it through. The company has long argued that it was only operating under the laws of the country, and that it was not for them to state the rights or wrongs of those laws. Also, in many respects Google didn't have much choice if it wanted to carry on its Chinese presence as the Government had themselves been actively blocking many types of search results on the site for years. However the move of active self censorship angered many and did seem to fly in the face of the company's "Don't be evil" motto.

The main trigger point in pushing this reversal of the company's stance however seems to be down to this latest hacking attempt on their Gmail service. While it is not directly blaming the Chinese authorities, it is certainly implicity stating that it feels the attack (and many similar attacks that have been going on for years) was at very least tolerated by the Government. Many security observers in the West have been watching for years as hackers based in China have been systematically probing the internet infrastructure of other countries and international companies. The targets have often been either of commercial benefit to China (allegations of theft of intellectual property by hack attacks abound) or political benefit. The discovery last year of a vast Chinese based botnet monitoring and observing usage of computers in organisations such as the Tibet Government in Exile, and that of many Human Rights organisations showed the extent to which this hacking is being done.

The big questions now are what other major Internet companies with operations in China (such as Microsoft and Yahoo amongst many others) will do. They will no doubt be feeling pressure now to follow Google in making this stand against Chinese activities on the internet. Naturally the desire to stay on friendly terms with the Chinese government and keep having access to the lucractive Chinese market will be strong - with its approx 300million users which is still only around 25% of the population, it's a huge market to target with products and services. However there will certainly now be a PR and marketing risk of being seen as the money motivated bad guy against Google's good guy stance.

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Google's been doing evil for a while now, a bit of censorship isn't going to make them lose sleep. Google has been making movements into the energy market, mobile phone hardware, communications, online auctions, office software, and more. One would almost think that Larry and Sergei get bored easily, and look for other things to challenge themselves, whilst at the same time trying to make a huge dent in the revenues of other businesses almost for fun.

Posted by: Nate Wood, Date 13 January 2010, 11:29AM

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