It appears that Google are having a pretty tough week, with the announcement that their Google Phone, the Nexus One isn’t doing as great as they expected, Google have now rather boldly decided that they will no longer censor search results on Google.cn, the Chinese version of the Google search engine.
Google launched google.cn in 2006, agreeing with the Chinese Government to have some censorship of the search results, however Google have taken the ‘enough is enough’ after evidence was found to suggest that a “sophisticated and targeted” cyber attack originating from China had targeted the email accounts of Chinese human rights activists. The company said its investigation into the attack found two accounts of its online mail service – Gmail – appeared to have been accessed as well as “at least twenty other large companies” over the course of the last month.
According to a post on Google’s Official Blog:
“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”.
It is great to see that Google are standing by the rights of these people affected by the cyber attacks, especially those who are fighting for a good cause however, Chinese rival search engine, Baidu are calling the move ‘hypocritical’ and “financially driven”. The reasons for Baidu accusations are because they feel Google want to pull out of China because they are not dominating the market share in the country, as recent figures show that Google have 31% of the market share and Baidu have 60%.
The search engine has now said it will hold talks with the government in the coming weeks to look at operating an unfiltered search engine within the law in the country, though no changes to filtering had yet been made.
I hope that Google can try to persuade the government to come to some sort of agreement, because if Google do decide to close down their search engines in China then how will this be helping the plight of the human rights activists who would only be able to get their voice heard if Google was still running in China.
So what do you think the search engine will do? Do you think they will be able to negotiate a deal with these Chinese Government? Do you think Google is making the right decisions? Leave a comment and let us know what you think…
Via Gizmodo