Google Says to China, ‘If you keep hacking our servers, We will leave China’

I cannot blame them one bit.

We launched Google.cn in January 2006 in the belief that the benefits of increased access to information for people in China and a more open Internet outweighed our discomfort in agreeing to censor some results. At the time we made clear that “we will carefully monitor conditions in China, including new laws and other restrictions on our services. If we determine that we are unable to achieve the objectives outlined we will not hesitate to reconsider our approach to China.”

These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered–combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web–have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.

The decision to review our business operations in China has been incredibly hard, and we know that it will have potentially far-reaching consequences. We want to make clear that this move was driven by our executives in the United States, without the knowledge or involvement of our employees in China who have worked incredibly hard to make Google.cn the success it is today. We are committed to working responsibly to resolve the very difficult issues raised.

via Official Google Blog: A new approach to China.

Which totally destroys the Conservative Meme that Google is some sort of evil socialist company. In actuality, Google strikes me as being more of a civil libertarian type of a group. Because Google is very big on privacy and has fought in court against privacy invasion; they also support many organizations that fight for privacy. The reason why Google is hammered by the right, is because they refuse to show deference to the American Christian Holidays. The reason they do this is to be fair to all of the faiths and because Google is not solely an American Company, but an international company with people from many faiths and backgrounds. Personally, I would like to see good be a bit more friendlier towards America, it’s Holidays and Customs, but, I do understand their position on the matter.

I personally commend Google’s stance on privacy and I am extremely happy to see Google stand up for the privacy of the people of China, especially those who are fighting against that Communist Government in China.