Thaindian News

By Michael van Poppel
BEIJING (THAINDIAN NEWS) — Google on Monday announced its decision to end its operations in China in the wake of a sophisticated cyber attack in December, instead now re-directing its Chinese visitors to an uncensored Google website.

Google was one of more than twenty U.S. companies that were the victim of a cyber attack in December, which originated from China. A Google investigation also found that Gmail accounts of dozens of human rights activists connected with China were being accessed by third parties, probably via phishing scams or malware on their computers.

“We made clear that these attacks and the surveillance they uncovered—combined with attempts over the last year to further limit free speech on the web in China including the persistent blocking of websites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google Docs and Blogger—had led us to conclude that we could no longer continue censoring our results on Google.cn,” said David Drummond, Google’s Senior Vice President of Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer.

Instead, Google.cn visitors are now being directed to Google.com.hk - where search results are not being censored. The same action has been taken for Google News and Google Images, which is now in simplified Chinese designed for users in mainland China.

Drummond said it has been a hard decision, and said discussions with the Chinese government were difficult. “We want as many people in the world as possible to have access to our services, including users in mainland China, yet the Chinese government has been crystal clear throughout our discussions that self-censorship is a non-negotiable legal requirement,” Drummond said. “We very much hope that the Chinese government respects our decision, though we are well aware that it could at any time block access to our services.”

Because China may now decide to block all Google services, Google has launched a new status page - http://www.google.com/prc/report.html#hl=en - specifically for users in China. The page shows which services are available without problems, which ones are partially blocked and which ones are completely blocked by the government.

As of Monday, Google Search, Google Images, Google News, Google Adsense and Gmail reported ‘no issues’ - while Google Docs, Google Groups and Google Picasa showed ‘partially blocked.’ Google Blogger, Google Sites and Youtube were completely blocked.

There have been weeks of speculation that Google was about to pull out of China.