The company decided it will no longer censor search results on Google.cn, which it had been doing as a concession to the Chinese government since 2006 in order to be able to operate in China. The company didn’t say when it would stop censoring material but stated that it would be discussing with Chinese authorities how it might continue to operate legally in China, if at all, with an unfiltered search engine.
Human Rights Watch praised the decision and urged other firms to follow suit in challenging censorship. "A transnational attack on privacy is chilling, and Google's response sets a great example," said Arvind Ganesan, director of the group's corporations and human rights programme.
Google said the cyber attack originated from China and that its intellectual property was stolen, but that evidence suggested a primary goal was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists.
Two accounts were accessed but Google believed only account information and subject lines were obtained. It is notifying the other targeted companies and working with US authorities.
Its investigation had shown that, separately, the accounts of dozens of US-, China- and Europe-based Gmail users who are advocates of human rights in China appeared to have been routinely accessed by third parties.
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