And not before time

After four years of peaceful co existence with the Chinese government it appears as thoogh Google is finally having second thoughts.

The incident that has provoked it was according to a Google spokesman that it had detected a “highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China”.

It transpires that this sophisticated attack was the hacking of Googlemail accouns of known human rights activists.

Back in 2006,Google agreed to the Chinese government's request to censor the web creating a version of its search engine bearing China’s web suffix, “.cn.This meant that only information deemed fit by the Chinese authorities could be found in the search engine.

It has been a criticism of Google since but the company has always maintained that it was a small price to be allowed to operate in China effectively bringing its population into the global internet market.

Quite whether this incident may be a justification for pulling out,we must wait and see