Karma has finally caught up with Google's evil decision to do the bidding of the Chinese government on its “google.cn” site:
Google said Tuesday that it would stop cooperating with Chinese Internet censorship and consider shutting down its operations in the country altogether, citing assaults from hackers on its computer systems and China’s attempts to “limit free speech on the Web.”
The move, if followed through, would be a highly unusual rebuke of China by one of the largest and most admired technology companies, which had for years coveted China’s 300 million Web users.
Google has not publicly confirmed that it believes the Chinese government is behind the attack, but its response pretty much suggests that, and sources inside the company are telling reporters that Google is sure it was some agents working on behalf of the Chinese government.
The Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists were the apparent target, or a target, of the cyberattack. Not surprising, since Google encourages its users to never delete anything, and even if they do, Google has the ability to keep permanent backups anyway, making the company's data centers a great target for very determined hackers.
So much for privacy and security.
Google's response isn't commendable, either, because the company never should have been censoring search results on the orders of the Chinese government in the first place. They're only doing the right thing now because they're mad at the Chinese. They didn't just decide one day to abide by their own self-professed principles, they were provoked into doing so.
Par for the course at Google.