The CodeGuard Blog

Like most of you, I read about Google’s recent threat to exit China over an alleged hacking incident.  Apparently, Google found someone breaking into its network to steal intellectual property and monitor Chinese dissidents.  Aside from the spectacular headlines, I don’t expect much to come of this.  Call me jaded, but this sounds too much like public relations and too little like corporate direction.  In short, if you really think that Google will leave China for more than a month, I have a bridge I’d like to sell you.

I’d be happy to be proven wrong.  I hope that Google succeeds in convincing the People’s Republic to change their stance on censorship.  But I’m not holding my breath.  If Google leaves China and stays out, I will apologize a dozen times to the “Don’t be evil” guys.  But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Aside from the really great PR that Google received for threatening to stop censoring searches, I wonder if there is another reason for this sudden bout of indignation.  Could it be related to the recent revelations about Google’s click through practices?  Could it be that the lid was coming off this percolating scandal?  (BTW, thanks to Ryan Naraine for his blog post on this one.)

I had started this post after reading the initial reports, but shelved it, saying that I was being too cynical about another player in the IT industry.  I told myself to be more trusting of a company’s altruistic intent.  Then I read the post by Evgeny Morisov and realized that maybe there was a story here.  If the cynics are right, this would be much more devastating to Google’s image than any of the individual problems they face right now.  Regardless of their reason for making this threat, there is a big difference between waving the gun around and actually pulling the trigger.

But how could anyone tell if the g-men are really sincere?  I guess we’ll have to see how they respond to China’s recent dismissal of their request.  It’s been 24 days since they threatened to stop filtering searches.  That should have been enough time for them to figure out how to flip the switch.  Maybe we can wait until March 15 for them to make their final decision.  More on the decision in a future post.

Maybe people should start to push them forward toward this epic decision.  That’s the ticket. Let’s encourage Google to “do the right thing” and see how they respond.  Is anyone taking bets?

Jim Molini, CISSP, CSSLP