Quick summary: Google and China are having a spat over allegations of hacking, with (quite likely) claims that the PRC – or representatives of the PRC – have been involved in the hacking of human right’s activist email accounts. But the way Google has played this has been a fantastic piece of online PR and turning a negative message positive because:

• it’s managed to lessen the impact on the fact that email accounts have been hacked (and are therefore insecure)
• it’s diminished the fact that Google has been censoring what it does in China for years
• it gives Google an excuse to leave a market where it isn’t the number one search engine

But the human rights campaigners have shown themselves to be complete idiots while China won’t give a damn about the row…

The majority of headlines are saying that Google is looking at pulling out of China due to hacker attacks and that’s what people will remember. But there’s a bit more to it.

Google set up in China in 2006 and, as even the official blog admits censored some results:

We launched Google.cn in January 2006 in the belief that the benefits of increased access to information for people in China and a more open Internet outweighed our discomfort in agreeing to censor some results.

Now it appears that a couple of the accounts have been hacked – Google says it believes this was through third party software being installed by people:

These accounts have not been accessed through any security breach at Google, but most likely via phishing scams or malware placed on the users’ computers.

But then goes on to say:

We have already used information gained from this attack to make infrastructure and architectural improvements that enhance security for Google and for our users.

Now, if we give Google the benefit of the doubt, then it’s just tightened up infrastructure. If being more cynical, it’s had to tighten up after the breaches were made.

Now, Google has been more and more under scrutiny – and rightly so – as its influence reaches into more and more people’s lives and it’s been under fire from a lot of people – for what its doing to copyright, for trying to become the whole internet, so it’s been under attack.

Add to that, it isn’t the top search engine in China (that’s Baidu).

So we have a company under fire on a number of fronts: being called too powerful by  government, leaking business details, email accounts that have been hacked into (raising questions about infrastructure and security), copyright and in a market where you’ve already had to censor results and still not number one. What to do?

Threaten to quit the market and say you’re lifting censorship blocks.

And look at all the positive PR that’s followed since. A wee threat and a lifting of their own imposed censorship.

Hats off to the PR team at Google. They’ve played this one well.

Another way to look at it: Google says it’s not censoring results any more (why? is it going to outsource that to someone else?) which results in China blocking Google, which would be another PR win for Google, making it look like the underdog.

(Disclaimer: This isn’t putting the boot into Google. Google’s been very good to me as a reporter, a PR person and in everyday life. They’ve never paid me a penny but I’ve certainly made money through them so I’m not saying the company is crap. I just think that today’s announcement can be viewed as more than Google striving to live up to the logo of Don’t Be Evil.)

Now, as for the human rights people. I can’t believe they were just using basic Gmail. On that note:

• every one of them that I’ve seen talking today seems to forget that Google’s been censoring China results for four years
• Google has a point: at the end of the day, security for your email is an individual’s responsibility. If you don’t take proper safeguards – especially when your life might be at risk – then you are being idiotic
• To people who moan about internet/email security, one word: PGP. It’s free, easy to find and use. And again, for those who moan about added levels of complexity, don’t use the tools – especially if you think using them wrongly (ie, unsecure email) could put your life at risk. If I was worried about my emails putting my life at risk, I’d be using PGP and at least three other things to stay secure.
• I’ll bet everyone is being paranoid in the human rights circles now about their email.
• Again, what this shows is that people are still suspending common sense and being all too trusting of computers.

As for China: they won’t care about this. They’re the world’s number one now and they know it. They don’t need Google, they don’t really need the Western world, they already own it, lock, stock and you know what.

A little bit more on this here.