Cyber Attack on Google in China May result in it being closed there

Google may stop their operations in China by blocking their search engine Google.cn due to a cyber attack on its site in China. According to Google, the cyber attack originated from China itself and caused Google huge damages. Although they do not blame the government directly for the attacks, it has shown its concern about cyber security in China. The result of not censoring the Google.cn may lead to closing of Google’s offices in China.  The Chinese rival of Google, Baidu, accused Google of hypocrisy and stated the move of closing offices in China was because Google faced an economical crisis in the Chinese market and it had nothing to do with the cyber attacks.

Incidentally, according to recent statistics, Baidu’s shares in the Chinese market went up by 13% whereas Google saw a fall in its share price by 0.57%. This statistical report may prove that Google actually wants to quit China due to a financial crisis as well.  According to another statistics, Baidu controls nearly 60% of the country’s search engine market whereas Google controls only one third of it.

According to a contract with the Chinese government, it agreed to filter certain content as mentioned by the Chinese government before starting Google.cn in China in 2006. However, after this attack Google wants hold talks with the Chinese government stating they would like to operate their Google.cn without filtering its content. This is the move, which makes it quite clear that Google no longer wishes to keep its offices in China.

The cyber attacks consisted of attacking the Gmail accounts of particular human rights activists of China. However, the attack was to gain information about certain account details, which corresponds to the date of opening the account, and other such information rather than accessing the contents of the emails.