Google has vowed to defy Chinese Internet censors and risk banishment from the lucrative market in outrage at “highly sophisticated” cyberattacks aimed at Chinese human rights activists.
“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,” Google Chief Legal Officer David Drummond said in a statement posted on the company’s blog.
“We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.”
The announcement was made amid growing tensions between China and the United States where US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called on Beijing to explain cyberattacks on the email accounts of Chinese human rights activists using its Gmail service, and that more than 20 other companies were similarly attacked.
Human rights activists hailed Google, voicing hope it would lead Western companies to reconsider their compromises in doing business in China.
“Through international pressure, finally a big business in the West has come to realize its own conscience,” said prominent Chinese dissident Wei Jingsheng, who spent 18 years in prison before seeking refuge in the United States.
YouTube now gets over a billion hits a day, according to the site’s founder Chad Hurley in a video posted Friday.
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