Google China Is All To Do With Avoiding A Privacy Trust Crisis, Not Censorship

24 hours after Google dropped a bombshell and said they would stop censoring results in China, and possibly pull out of the country altogether, the tech world continues to debate the deeper meaning.

After an initial focus on Google “doing the right” thing by dropping censorship, a secondary debate emerged around whether the whole announcement was simply smoke and mirrors spin due to Google not doing particularly well in China, and wanting to pull out anyway.

I don’t buy the economic argument based on raw figures: although Google has taken time to take market share in China, roughly 25-40% market share (depending on the figures you read) isn’t exactly bad in a country with over 300 million internet users, and with an internet user base that is still rapidly growing.

What this is all about is what Steven Hodson noted yesterday in the text of Google’s announcement: this is everything to do Google being hacked by the Chinese Government, or people supported by them. It’s an epic FU to the Chinese Government, who Google now beleives is out to get them given the upswing in hacking attempts.

Where Steve and I disagree is the take on the hacking: Google is probably pretty pissed about the industrial espionage, but I don’t believe that espionage is Google’s primary concern. It’s primary concern is privacy, or the implications that Google servers can be breached and personal details accessed. From the original Google post.

Second, we have evidence to suggest that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. Based on our investigation to date we believe their attack did not achieve that objective. Only two Gmail accounts appear to have been accessed, and that activity was limited to account information (such as the date the account was created) and subject line, rather than the content of emails themselves.

Third, as part of this investigation but independent of the attack on Google, we have discovered that the accounts of dozens of U.S.-, China- and Europe-based Gmail users who are advocates of human rights in China appear to have been routinely accessed by third parties. 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.

Besides the potential negative publicity if the accounts were accessed (aside from the ones that were via phishing,) the implication that a foreign Government, and by extension online criminals might gain access to Gmail is explosive. Some may argue that privacy is an allusion, but if Gmail became an open door to foreign Governments and cyber-criminals, it really would be.

The implication if the attacks were successful isn’t just a few negative China based stories, the implication could be a trust crisis where Google’s users fled Gmail because of the implication that it isn’t safe, and once they start fleeing on of Google’s most popular services, all Google services suffer. By speaking out now Google takes the higher moral ground, but it’s also more than that: by publicly implying the Chinese Government was behind the attacks, it brings global attention to the attacks, and pressure on the Chinese Government to cease them. Whether they cease or not we may never know, but given the alternative was to say nothing and for the attacks to continue (and possibly even succeed) Google is taking a serious, but calculated risk.

Google will of course lose, and Google will be out of China before Easter, if not sooner. Even if the Chinese Government backs off in the short term, they’ll never forget that Google, an American company, has challenged them publicly on an issue that so far has never been subject to dispute within China: censorship, and has also implied publicly that they are behind online hacking. End of the day, Google gets to play the hero to a fawning Western audience, and nothing much will change in China.

The Google China story is more about privacy, and heading off a trust crisis, then about Google and censorship or Google and its business success in China. I’ll give Google one thing here: they’ve got serious balls at this point, but I guess the gamble was worth taking given the alternative of saying or doing nothing.