Google is threatening to leave the Chinese market.
Hackers attacked Google and one of the targets was the email accounts of chinese human rights activists. Google has said they will no longer cooperate with Chinese censorship, but many have wondered why they ever agreed to do so in the first place. They’ve lost all credibility in their supposed company policy of “do no evil”, but they’re apparently hoping to save their tarnished image.
In reality, Google cares little about human rights and censorship. Google cares about profits and they’ve had losing profits in China because of all of the restrictions. China may be the single largest market, but the costs of doing business there are very high. Anyways, Google wasn’t directly concerned about the hacking of email accounts. Google, instead, was concerned about the fact that hackers (probably working for China) were trying to steal information from Google including code.
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-approach-to-china.html
http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/01/12/google-china-attacks/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/13/AR2010011300359.html?wpisrc=nl_tech
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/12/AR2010011202903.html?wpisrc=nl_tech
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/13/AR2010011301168.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/14/technology/companies/14baidu.html?ref=business
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/14/world/asia/14beijing.html?hp
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/14/business/global/14western.html?hp
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/13/opinion/13friedman.html?em
Marmalade 