Googling in China

Now that I am living in Beijing, and having Facebook, blogspot, twitter and many other sites blocked, I take it quite seriously when Google threatened to shut down its operations in China. Google claimed that hackers were trying to hack into the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists although this attack was not entirely successful. Such an intrusion is clearly not acceptable no matter what the circumstances. And in some ways I applaud Google in its efforts to not be evil. Having said that, Google is a profit making entity and presently has lost a lot of market share to Baidu, a Chinese company with close association to the government. All this of course presents an interesting point of perspective to the other side of the Google story ("Soul Searching" here might prove to be an interesting read).

Of course the Chinese government will not give in to Google's demands. But it will be interesting to see how this develops although for one thing, I am confident that Google will never be allowed to run freely without due censorship in a heavily restrictive climate such as China. I don't agree with China's censorship policies but I cannot find it in me to simply accept that Google's intention to quit China has any moral undertones to it as argued by some.