Google’s move threatens its economic stake in China, where the government reacted angrily to the switchover to Hong Kong, which enjoys semi-autonomous rule at the pleasure of Beijing. The state-controlled Xinhua news agency quoted an unnamed government official who said: “Google has violated its written promise it made when entering the Chinese market by stopping filtering its searching service and blaming China in insinuation for alleged hacker attacks.”

 

Google and other U.S. companies endured cyber-attacks in December at the hands of unidentified hackers based in China.

 

If Google finds itself shut out of the Chinese Internet market, it would lose access to nearly 400 million Web users. The company already had lost a deal with China Mobile, the nation’s largest cellular communications business, and No. 2 competitor, China Unicom, was reportedly ditching a new cell phone based on Google’s Android platform.

 

TOM Online, a Hong Kong Internet company, distanced itself from Google by canceling its use of the search engine.

 

However, the Google move appears to have rattled the Chinese Communist leadership, which wants to prevent other large foreign corporations from including human rights considerations in their business decisions.

-Noel Brinkerhoff

 

Google Shuts China Site in Dispute Over Censorship (by Miguel Helft and David Barboza, New York Times)

Google to Stop Censoring Search Results in China (by Ellen Nakashima, Cecilia Kang and John Pomfret, Washington Post)

Google Faces Fallout as China Reacts to Site Shift (by Michael Wines and Jonathan Ansfield, New York Times)

A New Approach to China (Google)

Google Out of China? Well, Not Really. (by Michael Santoro and Wendy Goldberg)

China Censors Searches on Google's Hong Kong-Based Search Engine (by John Pomfret, Ellen Nakashima and Cecilia Kang, Washington Post)