The Long View

Google, the online data monopoly that drew ire of human rights activists when it decided several years ago to agree to filter Chinese searches in order to strike a deal with the government of the Republic of China (a totalitarian political system), has now threatened to withdraw from China after Google’s email systems were hacked by supposed agents of the Chinese government in an effort to read the emails of Chinese human rights activists.

While I’d like to think that Google (whose corporate value is Don’t Be Evil, or some such vaccuous nonesense) has discovered a muscle called “courage,” I suspect that the motives are more strategic.

Google sees its future in its cloud computing operations and as the provider of email services for large clients (like major universities that provide email accounts to their students).

The Chinese hacker attacks threaten Google’s credibility as a reliable and secure provider of cloud services. It isn’t personal and it isn’t ethics, it’s just business.