Google is contemplating to shut down its China operations after Gmail cyber attack’

In an uglier turn of events for the search engine market, Internet Giant Google said that, it is considering upon abandoning its operations in China when hackers from China targeted e-mail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. Google gave reference to the sophisticated and targeted attack over its corporate infrastructure as originating from China. Supporting the move, Peter Barron from Google told, “We should no longer agree to censor our results in China”

However, Google did not hint towards the Chinese government yet said it would not censor its Chinese site’s results as is required by the Chinese government.  US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told Google’s allegations “raise very serious concerns and questions” and that the US was seeking an explanation from China.

After the news, the shares of Google fell down by 1.1% to $584.80 in after hours trading in New York.  In a blog post Google’s David Drummond said, “The most primary task of the attackers was to access the Gmail accounts of Chinese human right activists.” In the investigation, it was also revealed that e-mail accounts of the dozens of US, China and Europe based G-mail users who are fighting for the cause of human rights in China has been accessed by third parties. These accounts were not accessed by any breach at Google, but by phishing scams and malware placed on user computers. 20 other big companies ranging and dealing with number of business activities faced similar type of problems.

Google is in mood to discuss with Chinese government an option for a search engine that may be unfiltered but be operating within the ambit of law. The total search engine market in China was worth $1bn in 2009 and Google is estimated to make $600 from it.