Google threatens to quit China

AAP

GOOGLE Inc. has threatened to end its operations in China after it discovered that the email accounts of human rights activists had been breached.

The company disclosed in a blog post that it had detected a "highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China." Further investigation revealed that "a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists," Google's post said.

Google did not specifically accuse the Chinese government. But the company added that it is "no longer willing to continue censoring our results" on its Chinese search engine, as the government requires. Google says the decision could force it to shut down its Chinese site and its offices in the country.

Google first agreed to censor search results in China in 2006 when it created a version of its search engine bearing China's web suffix, ".cn." Previously, Chinese-language results had been available through the company's main Google.com site.

To obtain its Chinese licence, Google agreed to omit web content that the country's government found objectionable. At the time Google executives said they struggled with how to reconcile the censorship concessions with the company's motto of "don't be evil." By then Yahoo had come under fire for giving the Chinese government account information of a Chinese journalist who was later convicted for violating state secrecy laws.