China's IT brigade tried hacking Google. In response, Google is going to stop its censoring of content as retaliation. In the mid-term Google is likely to pull out of China.
GOOD FOR Google. The company's decision to stop censoring its Chinese search engine is more likely to mean the end of its China-based service than a breakdown of Beijing's political firewall. But more important than the question of whether Google.cn survives is the larger issue that Google has now raised for other Western companies and democratic governments -- which is whether China's gross and growing abuse of the Internet should be quietly tolerated or actively resisted.
Google cited a major instance of that abuse in announcing its policy change: "a highly sophisticated and targeted attack" on Google and more than 20 other large companies aimed at stealing software code. "A primary goal of the attackers," Google said, was breaking into the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists.
This is shocking but unsurprising. Cyberattacks from China aimed at U.S. businesses, the Pentagon and other government agencies have become commonplace, if not epidemic, in recent years. So have Beijing's demands that Western companies collaborate in its efforts to censor political content on the Internet and snoop on the private e-mails of its citizens, several of whom have been prosecuted with e-mails supplied by Yahoo. China aims not just at eliminating the free speech and virtual free assembly that are inherent to the Internet, but at turning it into a weapon that can be used against democrats and democratic societies.
They have 24 million marriageable men with no access to internet porn. It's a powder keg waiting to explode out there! :) It's really strange how china keeps on making the news with such negative reports so regularly. Maybe not so much surprising - a bit like Mark McGwire's admissions of steroid use - but strange it's happening now. We're suddenly seeing bastards for what they are.
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