Yeah, it's Wednesday. I know that. This one's a good one, though:
In a nutshell: There was a recent attempt to hack gmail accounts of prominent human rights activists in China coming from China. Based on Google's investigations, the attack was most likely by the Chinese government. In retaliation, Google will no longer be filtering searches on google.cn, and may pull out of China all together.
We'll have to see if Google actually follows through with these threats, but if so, this is fantastic. The Chinese government has been horribly restrictive about what information circulates from the internet to citizens. By no longer supporting these actions, Google can deal a major blow to censorship in one of the most populous nations in the world.
I was rather down on Google after they voluntarily agreed to start filtering searches, and rumor had it, they were cooperating a little too readily with the Chinese government regarding private information disclosure.
ReplyDeleteSo this is a step back in the right direction.
I do wonder how long before they begin cooperating again. China is the largest country in the world and as they continue to bring internet to the masses they are quickly becoming one of the largest user bases on the internet. Why boycott such a lucrative cash cow?