Breaking Down Walls

This is unexpected; Google is threatening to leave China because of systematic hacking and phishing by the government there. Will the question "Who lost Google?" become a political flashpoint in Chinese politics? Google May Shut Down In China

In a surprise announcement late Tuesday, Google Inc. said it may turn its back on the massive Chinese marketplace, following a sophisticated cyber attack that targeted the e-mail accounts of human rights advocates in the Asian nation.

In response to the digital assault, the Mountain View Internet giant said it will stop censoring search results in the country, reversing a widely criticized compromise it first made when launching in China.

Google stopped short of accusing the Chinese government of orchestrating or encouraging the security breach, but the object of the attacks and Google's emphatic response both underscored the likelihood in the minds of many observers.

"That's the strong implication," said Greg Sterling, founding principal of Sterling Market Intelligence.

Many people have expressed unhappiness with Google (and Yahoo's) decision to essentially go along with Chinese demands regarding access to the web. It's more than a little hypocritical for companies to play the role of hip progressive free speech absolutists at home and dreary censors abroad. More important, it was a sign of the creeping censorship that threatened to infect the US as China's economic and cultural power grew. It's very easy to imagine a world in which the Chinese are able to dictate what is or is not acceptable simply by being the largest market in the world. If Google does leave China, that would be a real slap in the face, and a line in the sand for the primacy of American standards of free speech over the demands of the autocratic Chinese market.