It’s been all over the radio, the papers, blogs and sites around the world.

China has severely pissed off Google and may be pulling its operations out of the country.

Embedded Content:

The move won’t affect Google too much. Baidu seems to be a much more popular search engine there. Previously Google had come under fire for censoring material and co-operating with the Chinese government. The more popular Baidu is not without these sins either, as in 2009 documents leaked by an employee showed all sorts of dark censorship practices.

Googles reaction to the Chinese Goverment  follows on from cyber attacks that threatened Gmail users. The plan seems to have been to attack activists using trojan software.

From the Google blog :

Like many other well-known organizations, we face cyber attacks of varying degrees on a regular basis. 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. We are currently in the process of notifying those companies, and we are also working with the relevant U.S. authorities.
Second, we have evidence to suggest that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. Based on our investigation to date we believe their attack did not achieve that objective. Only two Gmail accounts appear to have been accessed, and that activity was limited to account information (such as the date the account was created) and subject line, rather than the content of emails themselves.
Third, as part of this investigation but independent of the attack on Google, we have discovered that the accounts of dozens of U.S.-, China- and Europe-based Gmail users who are advocates of human rights in China appear to have been routinely accessed by third parties. These accounts have not been accessed through any security breach at Google, but most likely via phishing scams or malware placed on the users’ computers.

You can read the full post here.

Google is out and out saying the Chinese government are evil and behind the attacks. But the feeling around the web is just that.

Google have gotten great support in China for throwing down the gauntlet against the government and censorship by Chinese people in Beijing.

Bei Feng, a blogger who led a campaign to abolish the firewall, said losing Google would be a big blow. However, he and many others like him would likely use proxy servers to continue accessing their products.
“I admire Google’s decision a lot,” said Bei, whose e-mail account has been hacked into in the past. “Obviously it is a huge loss for Chinese Internet users. Sometimes such a price has to be paid for the long term. It’s a huge slap in the face for the Chinese communist party. I think they will try to retaliate.” LA Times

In the next few weeks Google will be talking to the government about allowing searches without censorship, and if the talks fall through, that could be the death of google.cn.

The move is an important one.

What next?  My hope, and expectation, is that Google engineers who might have been a bit halfhearted about implementing censorship mandates in google.cn could be full-throttle in coming up with ways for Google to be viewed despite any network interruptions between site and user.  There are lots of unexplored options here.  They’re unexplored not because they’re infeasible, but because most sites would rather not provoke a government that filters.  So they don’t undertake to get information out in ways that might evade blockages.  Here, Google would have nothing more to lose, so could pioneer some new approaches.  Circumvention of filtering (or other blockages, for that matter) tends to happen on the user side of things, seeking out proxies like the Tor network, or anonymizer.com.

Jonathan Zittrain, Future of the Internet

The Obama administration has come out in full support of Google according to the Telegraph.

Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, demanded “an explanation” for Beijing of Google’s allegation that its Gmail email system was infiltrated. “The ability to operate with confidence in cyberspace is critical in a modern society and economy,” she said. Robert Gibbs, Mr Obama’s press secretary, emphasised that the President backed internet freedom and said that Google had co-ordinated with the Obama administration before it had acted.

The cyber attacks have strained relations further between China and the U.S.

Next week, the U.S plans on launching new technology that could help censored nations gain unfiltered net access.

Many people around the web who had previously criticized Google over its Chinese business have come out in support of the company.

“Through international pressure, finally a big business in the West has come to realise its own conscience,” said the prominent Chinese dissident Wei Jingsheng who lives in exile in the United States after 18 years in prison in China.

“Some Western businesses thought that by making compromises with the Chinese communists’ regime, they could do business as they wished.

However, this is impossible because the Chinese government would not be satisfied.”

This is a big one, and we’ll be keeping an eye on it.