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Google May Close Its Chinese Operations

Google said on January 12 that it may pull out of China after a “sophisticated” computer network attack against its email service originated from China. The attack, discovered in December, was against the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. Most of the attack attempts were blocked. Only two accounts were accessed. The jeopardized information was just the account information (e.g. account creation time) and emails contents were intact.

Google questioned the feasibility of continuing its business operations in China and decided that it is no longer willing to continue censoring its search results on Chinese Google sites, which was required by the Chinese government.  

"We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn our offices in China," said David Drummond, Google Senior Vice President and Chief Legal Officer.

Source:
1. BBC Chinese, January 13, 2010
http://www.bbc.co.uk/zhongwen/simp/china/2010/01/100113_google_china_internet.shtml
2. Washington Post, January 12, 2010
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/12/AR2010011203024.html?hpid=topnews