Google mulls China exit after hack attack

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Google says its website in China has been hit by a "sophisticated attack".

Google said on its corporate blog that the attack originated in China and was not solely against them.

During its investigation it discovered that attacks were also made against at least 20 other large companies, including businesses in the internet, technology, finance, media, and chemical sectors.

"We have evidence to suggest that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists," Google said in its blog post.

It appears that this goal was not fully accomplished, with only two Gmail accounts being compromised.

As a result of the attacks, Google is re-evaluating its presence and goals in China.

"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" Google said. 

"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." 

Google says it may have to shut down google.cn and close all offices in China.

It says these decisions have been hard for them to make, and were made solely by executives in the United States - no employees in China were involved.

The blogosphere has been buzzing in light of this announcement, with more information being shared through Twitter.com as it is discovered.

Many individuals are saying they will refuse to use rival search engines to Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft's Bing, if they continue to stay in China. 

- © Fairfax NZ News