Two months ago specifically on January 12, Google received a surprising series of cyber attacks allegedly traced from the Chinese government bent on stealing account information from Chinese human rights activists. The epic showdown was cast between the rising power and the famed search engine corporation over the matter of business conditions in a censored China. The cyber attacks had also affected 20 other companies leading to Google making announcements to possibly unfilter its Chinese search engine making the dam break allowing all kinds of sensitive information to the awareness of Chinese society.

Such sensitive information regarding very controversial events that occured in China such as the Tiananmen Square Massacre had been desperately censored by the Chinese government. Google among some companies had agreed to the Chinese government’s condition of censorship. Today, Google after nearly two months of “negotiating” with the Chinese government has taken off its gloves and shut down their filtering/censoring system of their search engine. With the numerous human rights activists and organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch along with a few other human rights watchdogs at its back, Google started to redirect its many visitors who visit www.Google.cn to an unfiltered Chinese search engine on a Hong Kong server.

According to Google’s Chief Legal Officer David Drummond on Google’s blog, (http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/new-approach-to-china-update.html), they had “made clear that these attacks and the surveillance they uncovered- combined with attempts over the last year to further limit free speech on the web in China including the persistent blocking of websites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google Docs and Blogger-had led us to conclude that we could no longer continue censoring our results on Google.cn….So earlier today we stopped censoring our search services.”

Google with the breaking of its 2006 agreement with China possibly faces the revoking of Google’s Chinese domain name which would end the current flow of sensitive
information by redirecting users to the unfiltered Hong Kong server. Hong Kong is still mostly independent from mainland China due to the ‘official’ 99 years of British rule over the island until the year of 1997, which may or may not stall the Chinese government tampering with Hong Kong’s servers in order to get rid of Google. However, China can simply use its infamous Great Firewall to block the the Hong Kong server Google is currently using.

Human rights activists praised Google and many of the world’s netizens especially Americans saw this as a victory for human rights, additionally applauding Google for “finally growing a pair.” However, just a fraction of China’s internet users may have been the only ones “shown the light” as Google was not the number one search engine in the Chinese market. Baidu, China’s #1 search engine, has the most users which provided Google’s business tough competition although they owned 20% of the market. But Google can’t be blamed for that, as they actually were the #1 search engine in China until the Chinese government started to redirect the majority of its internet users to www.Baidu.com

So who can claim total victory in this showdown? Was it the human rights activists, Google, the Chinese government? Google although they’re flushed with these many praises and support has maybe undergoed a financial risk. The Google revenue from China is more than 500 million U.S dollars per year, a somewhat hefty part of Google’s 20 billion U.S dollars annual revenue made from ad sales yet after this little event it’s expected that the Chinese revenue will decrease though Google still intends to have a research arm and keep up the ad sales business in China  However, Google may be passing by a chance, being noble and highly principled now, to target the rapidly growing market of more than 1.3 billion people.

So Google along with its human rights friends showed the world that it would throw away materials for principles by standing against one of the most heavily censored countries in the world which, although highly improbable, may convince other companies in similar situations to leave the market; but did Google win this fight?

The Chinese government with its successful control on the flow of information for its colossal populace can easily and will of course block Google’s uncensored server from its internet users. China has already moved to block search results on Google’s Hong Kong search engine (www.Google.com.hk) and will never remove its policies of censorship while their government is in control. It will also be difficult for Google to establish their influence in the Chinese market from the outside, even in the politically autonomous Hong Kong. Google was also one of the lesser censored search engines when compared to its competitors such as Baidu which means Google’s decision was a small victory for the censor-loving Chinese government.

While the victor remains to be seen in the next coming weeks, the ones stuck in the middle of this struggle are obviously the U.S politicians as they possibly face further straining of the Sino-U.S relationship because of this “Google inconvenience”. The workers for Google.cn were accounted for, or at least attempted to be acquitted of guilt for Google’s defiance to the Chinese government, as Chief Legal Officer David Drummond later said of Google’s Chinese employees in the announcement:

“Finally, we would like to make clear that all these decisions have been driven and implemented by our executives in the United States, and that none of our employees in China can, or should, be held responsible for them.”

Drummond concluded the official announcement by saying “We are immensely proud of them”.

Many who dissaprove of Chinese censorship can say the same thing for Google. Bera