Google, Citing Cyber Attack, Threatens to Exit China

By ANDREW JACOBS and MIGUEL HELFT
NYT
This article was reported by Andrew Jacobs, Miguel Helft and John Markoff and written by Mr. Jacobs.

BEIJING — Google said Tuesday that it would stop cooperating with Chinese Internet censorship and consider shutting down its operations in the country altogether, citing assaults from hackers on its computer systems and China’s attempts to “limit free speech on the Web.”

The move, if followed through, would be a highly unusual rebuke of China by one of the largest and most admired technology companies, which had for years coveted China’s 300 million Web users.

Since arriving here in 2006 under an arrangement with the government that purged its Chinese search results of banned topics, Google has come under fire for abetting a system that increasingly restricts what citizens can read online.

Google linked its decision to sophisticated cyberattacks on its computer systems that it suspects originated in China and that were aimed, at least in part, at the Gmail user accounts of Chinese human rights activists.

(More here.)