Google out of China
 

From WSJ.com
Google Inc. said it may leave China after an investigation found the company had been hit with major cyber attacks it believes originated from the country -- a move that would amount to a high-profile rebuke of China by a major U.S. firm.

The attack targeted as many as 34 different companies or other entities, according to two people familiar with the investigation, which has been under way for weeks.

Thoughts?

I think its about time someone took a stand against the Chinese gov't.... Google has the $$$ to do it and get away with it....

This might be related to Zero recently meeting with the Dali Lhama and Taiwan. Course, when we bombed the Chinese embasy in Iraq, they burned our's down as well.
Probably political showboating or industrial espionage.

Good. Fuch China. The faster we sever our ties with them and force ourselves onto the (difficult) path of self-sufficiency, the better. I'd love to see other U.S. businesses pull out of there too, and to see us say "screw the WTO", "screw the G7", "screw 'most favored nation' trade status" which only favors China at the expense of the USA, invalidate all Chinese-held treasuries and tell them to choke on their cheap imported crap. Their manufacturing sector has been systematically stolen from the U.S. and other nations through a combination of slave-labor tactics, complete disregard for the environment and the deliberate pegging of their currency to ours (something that IMHO should be considered about one step short of an act of war - it is done for no other reason than to subvert our country and parasitically destroy its manufacturing, which it has done quite a nice job at...)

I'm sick and tired of seeing our country sell out to and suck up to foreign interests - China in particular. I won't burden myself with political correctness here. Screw them. Let them deal with their own economy, their own people and their own problems and let us deal with ours. No more "New World Order" and no more putting one-sided international trade on the front burner with every country on earth while our own economy crumbles to ash.

Way to go Google!

So Jeff, don't hold back, how do you really feel? ;)

Sounds like Jeff is on the fence about this.

When did he meet with the Dalai Lama? And when did we bomb the Chinese Embassy in Iraq?

RL, that all happened in an alternative universe. ;)

Never took you for a Socialist? But you must applaud what Chavez is doing in Venezuela isnce it is a lot like what you are espousing. Telling foreign firms to sell up or get out so spending stays in the country, refuse to pay debts they don't like, closing firms who tried to raise prices to cover their devaluation of the currency. All in the name of making Venezuela self sufficient, and not 'owned' by foreign interests. It's going well for them so far.....

Shame on the Chinese govt if they did attack Google's server, Google should have soild evidence they should present.

I actually find the Google decision rather odd. Seems counter intuitive to support human rights and free speech by abandoning the very humans who's speech and rights you are trying to support.

Perhaps they are leaving because they are having trouble competing, they are a distant #2.
Perhaps the laws in China do not align with how they are used to doing business.
Perhaps they are trying to create some noise around some of the 'evil' things that they have done in the market.

Jeff sounds like he wants to close off the US to foreigners, like Mao did in the 60s. Ironic.

Good for Google! they caved in to the Chinese gov in the past.

Guess what comes up in Google search when you type "Tieniman Square" in China???
Google finally nutted up and are serving SERP pages everyone else see's in the US.

They drew a line in the sand with the Chinese Gov, accept it or we pull out! Bravo!!!!

I don't really see what leverage GOOG has over the Chinese govt. They have Baidu which is #1 in search market in China, don't need GOOG.

Obvious play on this is BIDU stock. If #2 goes away, more profit for #1. (I've never actually looked at the stock, just kidding, sort of.)

GOOG has some other businesses they are trying to do. Android O/S for mobile devices, cloud computing hosting, etc. If they get in some kind of cut-off-nose-to-spite-face search spat with the Chinese govt, that can't help those ventures.

They will never pull out of China - they do not have the cajones. Notice the press release says "may pull out". If they intended to do so they would have just done it.

Google’s problem is the mainline enters at Beijing and Shanghai with the full government throttles in place.

Everything is filtered by the government coming in and going out of China, in actuality Google never had a chance in China to begin with which is probably prompting their our way or the highway attitude.

Bidu is a native son, with all that implies in a communist country!

My wife only uses Baidu even in the US. Dissident communications in China is done mainly via text messaging.