Google to shut down in China?

Google announced today that it may have to shut down it's operations in China entirely following a security breach on the popular gmail service.

David Drummond, the Chief Legal Officer at Google revealed in a statement: "In mid-December, we detected a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google."


He continued on to say that the primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of human rights activists in China, the US and Europe, and that whilst only two Chinese mail accounts had been successfully, (though only partially) hacked, dozens of the US and European gmail accounts had been accessed. 


Since discovering the plot Google has made several improvements in it's infrastructure and architecture to enhance users' security. However, they have made it clear that whilst the Chinese Government is not explicitly implicated in this episode, Google is, as a result of these breaches, unwilling to continue to placate the Chinese Government's wish for censorship within chinese borders. 


Google attracted a lot of negative publicity in 2006 when they made the decision to implement censored searches in China, but have worked very hard to strike a balance in the country where freedom of speech is significantly curtailed and citizen's rights are routinely infringed. 


Google will now enter into some, no doubt protracted discussions with the Chinese Government's army of lawyers to ascertain whether or not they will indeeed be allowed to operate in China at all following these revelations.