Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin probably never thought of themselves in Reaganesque terms. Yet their declaration this week that they are no longer willing to censor what Google allows to be posted on the Internet in China effectively calls on that nation’s communist dictators to tear down their digital wall against the free flow of information.
Google’s challenge was issued in a post on the company blog by David Drummond, the firm’s chief legal officer. Drummond described “a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google.” He said Google also discovered that Gmail accounts of dozens of Chinese and Western human rights activists have been routinely monitored “by third parties.” As a result, Drummond said, Google is reviewing its operation in China and is prepared to end it. Google’s China office opened in 2006 after the California-based Internet giant agreed to Chinese government demands that it be allowed to censor dissident Internet content, a decision for which the U.S. company was widely criticized by human rights advocates and others.
