It looks like neither side is going to give in the battle of wills and words between Google and China. So how long before Google makes good on its promise and pulls up stakes and departs the Middle Kingdom? Not long, perhaps as soon as next month. eSecurity Planet has the dates and details.
Google may finally be ready to call it quits in China following a protracted war of words with the nation’s government over censorship and cybersecurity.
The Bloomberg news service, citing a report by Shanghai-based China Business News, said Google “may announce” an April 10 pullout as soon as next week on March 22. That’s in keeping with recent comments by Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO, who in recent weeks has said several times that Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) expects to announce a decision “soon” on its China operations.
The issue exploded in January when Google’s head legal counsel, David Drummond, wrote in a blog post that the company planned to stop abiding by the Chinese government’s censorship restrictions on search results for its Google.cn search engine site. At the same time, Google also said it, and dozens of other U.S. corporations had been subject to various unauthorized attempts to hack its network and some of its users’ accounts.
Google also said its investigation indicated the attacks, which have become known as “Operation Aurora,” originated in China, possibly with the complicity of the government there, a charge Chinese officials hotly denied.