http://money.cnn.com/2010/01/12/technology/Google_China/By Hibah Yousuf, staff reporterJanuary 12, 2010: 7:40 PM ET
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Google said Tuesday that it may leave China and shut down its strictly monitored site there, Google.cn, citing censorship rules and a targeted cyber attack on its network infrastructure.
In a blog post, senior vice president of corporate development and chief legal officer David Drummond said the search giant first detected the attack last month and thought it posed a security threat, adding that the company frequently faces cyber attacks of varying degrees. *But an investigation of the attack exposed evidence that showed the attackers' primary goal was to access Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists, Drummond said. While two accounts were hacked, the accessed information was limited to the date the account was created and subject lines, not the content of any emails.
"We have taken the unusual step of sharing information about these attacks with a broad audience not just because of the security and human rights implications of what we have unearthed, but also because this information goes to the heart of a much bigger global debate about freedom of speech," wrote Drummond in the post. When Google began its operation in China in 2006, it aimed to strike a balance between its stated goal of making the world's information widely available and the requirement that all Internet companies doing business in China adhere to government regulations regarding censorship.
But the attacks changed Google's stance about operating in the country.
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