Google's Had Enough of China?

Image via Wikipedia

Technology Thursday

First, my heart goes out to the people of Haiti. The devastation (please note: some of the photos here are quite distressing) there is just heart-wrenching. Everything I've heard so far says that the most helpful thing people can do (unless you're a disaster recovery specialist who can help in-country somehow with relief efforts) is to donate cash. Be smart, don't get scammed, but consider even a small donation. After the big tsunami a few years back I began contributing to Oxfam and the Haiti devastation reminded me to double-check that I renewed my contribution for this year. But there are plenty of other legitimate relief agencies who need support, as well. Google's compiled a list of links and the White House is recommending donations to the Red Cross.

* * *

Now, on to our regularly-scheduled Technology Thursday post. Google made some geopolitical news this week when it announced, in a truly fascinating blog post, that it is going to stop censoring its results in China, knowing that may well result in them being forced to remove themselves from the Chinese market entirely.

The strong implication of the post--at least how I'm reading the tea leaves, anyway--is that there have been state-sponsored attacks not only against human rights activists, but against Google itself, as well as many other companies. Nowhere does Google explicitly point to the PRC as the source of the attack, but the implication is definitely there.

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. However, it soon became clear that what at first appeared to be solely a security incident--albeit a significant one--was something quite different.

First, this attack was not just on Google. As part of our investigation we have discovered that at least twenty other large companies from a wide range of businesses--including the Internet, finance, technology, media and chemical sectors--have been similarly targeted.

My reading of the initial post from Google and subsequent discussions is that not only did China go after dissidents and human rights activists, but they also attacked Google itself (its own internal infrastructure, perhaps trying to steal source code, who knows) along with several other companies. If true, that's a state-sponsored act of aggression against a private corporation. Thus, it is completely understandable to me that Google's decision is to do away with its agreement with them about censorship and let the chips fall where they may. It may be a bluff, I suppose, but we'll see.

Note that the U.S. State Department has issued a statement about this issue. The Wall Street Journal had a fascinating piece. What I found most interesting was the claim that there was disagreement at Google about what to do about it and that Sergey Brin's point of view won out over Eric Schmidt's.

Google's statement was hotly debated within the senior ranks of the company, according to two people familiar with the matter. Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt was concerned about the potential backlash, but operating in China has been a concern of Google co-founder Sergey Brin in particular, these people said.

That strikes me--based on no data whatsoever, admittedly--as very much a generational sort of difference. Robert Scoble had an interesting piece of analysis about the push and pull and China. And many others, of course, have weighed in. Some are skeptical about Google's motives, suggesting that their likely potential market share was not that great, anyway, and they wanted an excuse to get out. Others suggest that it's simply a PR move for Google to impress the Europeans (who are apparently getting feisty about privacy).

I wonder, though, whether this may turn out to be a pretty big deal. Google has now--unless they back down--paved the way for other companies to follow suit should they choose to, in effect throwing down a gauntlet. They've also upgraded the security on gmail apparently in light of these recent attacks. So this could be a case of someone finally standing up to a bully and showing how it's done. Or, it could instead turn out to be nothing much of anything at all. Much will depend on what happens over the next weeks and perhaps months. This morning the New York Times ran an article with China's response, that, tellingly, focused on the dissident question and not the cyberattack issue.

Given that the U.S. Secretary of State has promised a big policy speech on the importance of Internet freedom next week, this should be a very interesting issue to watch. `

Comments

[Katherine]

Wow, what a fascinating set of issues. I am so used to free and unfettered access to the Internet that it's not until I travel to a country with limits that I realize how big the information gap must be around the world.

I suppose this moment of truth was bound to happen. I'm impressed by the position Google has taken and I hope the Chinese government has an equally classy response.

(Can't we all just get along??)

[Kristie]

Very interesting post! I had no idea this was going on. Good for Google.