Google Defends Against Large Scale Chinese Cyber Attack: May Cea. Google is releasing information about a “highly sophisticated and targeted attack” on their corporate infrastructure that occurred last month.
The attack originated in China and resulted in the “theft of intellectual property from Google.” In light of the attack Google is making sweeping changes to its Chinese operations. Google is releasing some information about these attacks to the public. The company says that a minimal amount of user information was compromised, but has come to the alarming conclusion that the attacks were targeting the information of Chinese human rights activists.
Google found that these attacks were not just going after Google’s data, but were also targeting at least twenty other major companies spanning sectors including Internet, finance, chemicals, and more. Like many other well-known organizations, we face cyber attacks of varying degrees on a regular basis. Google’s China Stance: More about Business than Thwarting Evil. Writing about China as an American is always tricky, but nowhere near as tricky as what an American company faces doing business there.
Let me say upfront, I don’t envy Google. The company has had more success in China than a lot of other big Valley names, but isn’t and will likely never be the market leader. And to get that far, many in the West feel Google has had to compromise its “do-no-evil” ethics by agreeing to some of the government’s censorship rules. Google has been damned either way: China is too big of a market to ignore, but getting as far as they have has come at a steep price to their reputation and international (read: Western) integrity. Enter the now famous blog post (that was notably, only on the English-language site) saying that Google was no longer playing by the Chinese government’s rules and was prepared to close down Chinese operations if it came to that. 1. 2. 3.
This may be the most shocking part: In retrospect Yahoo has played China far better than Google. Google likely to retreat from China (update) - Home. Please note: the original commentary was moved to the personal blog of the author here.
Google posted an article on its offical blog today stating that it will no longer censor its Chinese language search results even if this means that the company will "have to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China. " The company lists recent hacker attacks from China in order to monitor China based activists as a reason. This move doesnt come entirely surprising to us, after all we've heard from sources very close to Google's China operations and also after the resignation of Google China's former president Kai-Fu Lee in September last year.
The company has been constantly losing market share against its rival Baidu in the last few months and is currently left with a small part (below 30%) of the Chinese search market. The way however Google (US HQ) arguments and prepares its exit of the Chinese search market is very surprising. What Google Will Do in China (SXSW Presentation)
Kaiser Kuo presented today at SXSW about Google in China.
He spoke about how the Google situation will impact Chinese Internet users, other companies and the Chinese government. In the presentation, Kuo (who also spoke to ReadWriteWeb a week ago) clarified how censorship in China works. Contrary to popular belief, it is not the Great Firewall that has the most impact in China - but something China calls "self-discipline. " Kuo also discussed what the next moves will be from Google, since he believes that the ball is in Google's court and Beijing won't push the situation. History of Google in China Before getting down to the nitty gritty of the current Google-China standoff, Kaiser Kuo gave some valuable context to Google in China. In 2005 Google started to hire aggressively in China, he said.
At first Google had a notice on their search results stating that they were censored. Google never had an easy time of it in China. The Great Firewall So The Great Firewall is more of an inconvenience.