Friday, September 3, 2010

From Google.cn to Google.hk

January 13th, 2010, Google Company in China claimed that they would cancel the censorship to Google.cn and all the employees in Google headquarters in China confirmed that Google will leave Chinese market very soon. Since then, Google.cn would be replaced by Google.hk. Here a some reasos about this case.


Attacked by Hackers

In mid-December laast year, Google was targeted attacked by a highly sophisicate corporation originating from China. Part of Google's interllectual property was theft. Additionally, two Gmail accounts were accessed by attackers, those accounts were related to Chinese human rights activities. Similar to Google, at least other twenty companies claimed that they have been through the same situation before. According to a person related to this case, there was no proof that Chinese government was invloved. But at the same time, another insider said that if Goolge Company did not believe the hackers were authorized by Chinese government, they would not take such an extreme action.


Chinese Internet Censorship

The implement of Internet filtering and shielding by Chinese government always leads to the tension between Chinese government, and US government, as well as Chinese government and companies like Google and Yahoo. Google General Conusel David Drammen made a statement in his Blog that they needed to reconsiderate the feasibility of their business in China based on the Internet monitoring ad limitation of Expression freedom in China.


Delicated Relationship with Baidu

Baidu (the biggest search engine in China) was hacked early last year, which cost uncountable loses, however, by the same time, Baidu created incredible advertisement effects. Within one day after its attack, the most popular key words on Google were all about Baidu. It is possible that Google needed to draw attention from Baidu. No one can approve this point, However, if Google.cn stopped working in China, Baidu would definitely benefit from it at least in a short term.


Personally, I am a big fan of Google; and I use Google much more than any other search engine. The leaving of Google surprised everybody in China. No doubt, apart from economic consideration, there are other reasons for Google to make this decision to give uo such a big market. In this case, Chinese government played a very important role. Nowadays, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and most websites based in Taiwan are blocked by government. This is definitely not a good and healthy phenomenon for China to join the first-level countries.

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