Google on China for Free Speech

In mid-December a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on Google’s corporate infrastructure originating from China was noticed by Google. It resulted not only loss in the intellectual property of Google but also led Google to take a huge step to review the feasibility of business operations in China. Google has decided to not to censor results on Google.cn. Google might have to shut down Google.cn, and potentially all offices in China.

Google has revealed 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. They have evidence to suggest that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists, which they could not achieve. Moreover, they have been successfully accessing dozens more Gmail accounts of U.S.-, China- and Europe-based users who are advocates of human rights via phishing scams or malware placed on the users’ computers.

Google has already taken steps to make sure that no such attacks take place in future by making architectural improvements that enhance security for Google and for its users. This effort of Google is visible with the policy change in the login process of Gmail. Now HTTPS (Secured) protocol is made default setting when Gmail user logs into his account.

I feel it’s not only a attack on Google but also attack on free speech nature of the internet and also think that it’s the people of the China who will be most affected with the decision of the Search Engine giant to pull out everything from China as a result of the shameful attack.

Official Google Blog: A new approach to China