Google's New Approach to China

Big news: Following an investigation into some Gmail and intellectual property security breaches from China, Google decided that they will no longer accept censorship as a condition for being permitted the use of their Chinese Google site (www.google.cn). A briefing on the events that led to their decision can be found on the Official Google Blog.

Highlights from the post:

• "We have taken the unusual step of sharing information about these attacks with a broad audience not just because of the security and human rights implications of what we have unearthed, but also because this information goes to the heart of a much bigger global debate about freedom of speech."

• "We launched Google.cn in January 2006 in the belief that the benefits of increased access to information for people in China and a more open Internet outweighed our discomfort in agreeing to censor some results."

• "We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China."

"Don't be evil," indeed. Read the full post here (highly recommended!). The NYTimes also has a writeup of the policy shift.

Thanks for the find, Sarah and Ryan!