Google considers leaving China

China had 384 million Internet users in 2009 – more than the entire U.S. population.
However, Google might withdraw from China, and all its possible revenue, due to recent attacks on its servers.

Google is concerned with hackers attempting to gain access to several Gmail accounts, many of which belonged to individuals around the world who are active in the human rights debate surrounding Chinese policies.

What’s interesting to Fred Cate, director of IU’s Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research, is that Google has linked these cyber attacks with the decision to change its policies in China.

He said these types of attacks, often targeting American businesses and government computers, are not uncommon and have been increasing in intensity in the last few years.

“Google’s not the only company to experience these attacks, but Google, for whatever reason, drew a line in the sand and connected two things that really have nothing to do with each other. We’re tired of these attacks, and on the other hand we’re tired of complying with Chinese government regulations that Internet suppliers in China have to comply with,” Cate said.

Because no other companies have come forward with evidence suggesting that these attacks have caused significant harm, Cate said he thinks this move by Google is more about the censorship restrictions than about security.

“It feels a little bit like they’re trying to use the attacks as strategic leverage to try to get from under the other types of restrictions,” Cate said.

Google, which operates as Google.cn in China, launched in 2006 while conforming to China’s censorship laws.

This decision was greeted with much criticism from people around the world, claiming that Google’s “do no harm” motto was violated by its decision to censor search results. However, at the time, Google posted on its blog that it saw the greater evil was to deny Chinese people access to the information it could provide.

Scott Kennedy, director of IU’s Research Center for Chinese Politics & Business, explained that Google could have more to lose by staying in China under current restrictions than by pulling out entirely.

“The potential damage to the rest of the business globally is higher than the potential damage of their business in China by doing this. And that, in fact, their business in China will eventually be much better even if they have to temporarily suffer a pretty severe setback,” Kennedy said.

What is surprising, he said, was that Google decided to make its problems with the Chinese government public.

Sophomore Sherry Lu said although she uses Google when she travels back to China, she doesn’t think that it would be greatly missed by most Chinese Internet users because it’s not the most popular search engine.

However, most of the content that’s blocked is American-based sites, such as YouTube and Facebook, Lu said. Because most Chinese have their own comparable social networking and content-sharing sites, they don’t really miss those that are censored.

“I’m sure a lot of the Chinese are angry about the censorship, even if they’re not outwardly doing anything about it. If they knew what you can access in America, they’d probably be a little frustrated,” Lu said.