In a lengthy blog post today, Google announced that it would no longer censor its Chinese search engine, even if it means pulling out of China entirely. This comes in the wake of a wide-ranging attack on its infrastructure targeting Chinese human rights activists.

In the post, Google outlined in rather striking detail a “highly sophisticated and targeted attack” that occurred last month, targeting around 20 companies. In its investigation, the search giant found that the attackers’ primary objective was accessing Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. It also found that dozens of other Gmail accounts owned by human rights activists worldwide were compromised, most likely due to phishing scams or malware.

Google wouldn’t say it, but implications are that the Chinese government had something to do with these attacks.

As a result of the attacks, Google has decided to reassess its presence in China. The Chinese government and Google have fought over censorship before, but currently the search engine does block certain results (such as images of the Tiananmen Square massacre).

Now Google’s making it clear that it won’t comply with China’s demands any longer. Here’s the key paragraph from the Google post:

“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.”

Google has taken a very public stand against censorship, albeit one that is years overdue. How this series of events plays out could not only affect Google and the tech community, but global politics as a whole.

(Source: Mashable)