Google Goes Away

The lead article in today’s New York Times is titled, “Google May End Venture in China Over Censorship.” It describes a decision by the company to leave China after its software was hacked in an attempt to gain access to Gmail accounts belonging to Chinese human rights activists.

The decision by Google should be commended as an altruistic reaction to increasingly sophisticated attacks on its security systems and source code. It seems like the latest incidents were the straw that broke the camels back. Google had previously agreed to block searches for terms like Tiananmen Square massacre or the Dalai Lama.

According to the article, Google’s action represents one of the first times a respected international business left China. Their departure is especially powerful because they will be losing Internet ad revenues from about 300 million Chinese web users.

China may have anticipated problems as their country has been promoting an alternate search engine, Baidu. The article states that Baidu has been steadily gaining market share over Google.

Google had faced difficulties with the Chinese government in the past. It was forced to disable a function that lets the search engine suggest terms to its users. And at one point, nationwide access to Google and Gmail was blocked. 

Anyway, kudos to Google for doing the right thing.