Break those links

13 January 2010 By John Foley Follow @johnsfoley

The search giant cites a vendetta against free speech as the reason it may pull out of China. But commercial factors probably play a role too. Google now has a chance to regain ethical credentials it compromised at China’s behest, and earn valuable political goodwill elsewhere.

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Google said it may shut down its mainland Chinese operations and close its Google.cn site following a cyberattack in which intellectual property was stolen and customer details targeted.

The U.S. search engine company said it had uncovered attacks on 20 other large companies, and unsuccessful attempts to access Gmail accounts of known Chinese human rights activists. Advocates of human rights in China, but who live outside China, had already been targeted. Google did not say who had perpetrated the attacks.

Google's chief legal officer said the company was no longer prepared to censor results for searches in China, which it agreed to do in return for permission to set up its Chinese site in 2006. Searches with filtered content have hitherto appeared with a disclaimer alerting users that results have been adapted too meet local requirements. This has attracted criticism from users elsewhere, especially in light of Google's "don't be evil" corporate mantra.

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