news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100112/ap_on_hi_te/us_tec_google_china
AP stories not welcomed at Google for now AFP/File - Google on Tuesday confirmed that it has stopped adding Associated Press stories to its online properties ...
will stop censoring its search results in China and may pull out of the country after discovering that computers hackers had tricked human rights activists into opening their e-mail accounts to outsiders. The change-of-heart announced Tuesday heralds a major shift for Google, which has repeatedly said it will obey Chinese laws that require some politically and socially sensitive issues to be blocked from search results that are available in other countries Google disclosed in a blog post that it had detected a "highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China." Further investigation revealed that "a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists," Google said in the post written by Chief Legal Officer David Drummond. Google did not specifically accuse the Chinese government. But the company added that it is "no longer willing to continue censoring our results" on its Chinese search engine, as the government requires. Google says the decision could force it to shut down its Chinese site and its offices in the country. It's unclear how much of a blow to its business Google would suffer by pulling out of China.
com handled 62 percent of Web searches in China compared with 29 percent for Google. Clothilde Le Coz, Washington director for Reporters Without Borders, called Google's willingness to stop censoring results a positive step, but added it doesn't necessarily mean more information will be available to the average Chinese person. "The Chinese government is one of the most efficient in terms of censoring the Web," she said. The media watchdog group has long criticized Google and other Internet companies for caving to China's censorship regime. A spokesman for the Chinese consulate in San Francisco had no immediate comment.
To obtain its Chinese license, Google agreed to omit Web content that the country's government found objectionable. At the time Google executives said they struggled with how to reconcile the censorship concessions with the company's motto of "don't be evil." By then Yahoo had come under fire for giving the Chinese government account information of a Chinese journalist who was later convicted for violating state secrecy laws.
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