Yeah, you just call it the "Patriot Act" :-).

In fact there are countries that have something that is called privacy (law). Remember the "bank-secret" in switzerland, which was bashed by american nazis?

"All your spyplane are belong to us". We all know just how much George Dubya Bush did when a USA spyplane made an emergency landing in China after spying on the Chinese.

The Chinese interrogated the crew, while Bush looked weak.

The Chinese cut the airplane into little pieces and analysed all the electronics etc. And gave some of the pieces back.

What did Bush do? He increased USA borrowing from China, lol.

China is the new boss, make no mistake. Without China the USA is fubar.

All governments spy on their citizens, ours do and so do yours. It's just how many regular council workers have access to that data and what will happen if they do.

In China corrupt officials steal businesses and get innocent people sent to prison, this has been well documented in recent years. Not as much happens in our countries in the West. Instead our leaders invade countries with massive oil stocks and say that they have weapons of mass distraction ;-)

"Oi, give us all your oil or we will kill you and your family!" - This is not a playground taunt, but something that the USA and British go around the world doing. It's how the British Empire was founded, stealing from the poor in other countries, killing some of them and forcing the rest to live as slaves. All in the name of the monarch, knighthoods and wealth for the killers and ruthless lunatics at the top.

It's always been this way, and it always will be.

;-))

Most media label the "Google versus China" = "Liberty versus communism."

No, I disagree with that.

The Google's most profitable advertisement sector is internet porn, and the Chinese government has been strong banning internet porn in the past 12 months.

Everyone knows the internet porn is a mult-billion dollar fast cash internet business.

If the Chinese Law strictly prohibited internet porn, you just can't go international and label porn as liberty, and expect the Chinese government to go lose on it again.

Well, does the google really make a lot of money from the liberty website in the states? No.

Well, doesn the IT giant has trouble in maintain its security? No.

Or maybe it is a top marketing campaign idea, if you have Obama on your back?

So, think again!

When it comes down to human rights the only internet company to stand up and say no to informing on suspected disadents everyone handed over the info without any delay. The only company who stood their ground was google and they said no. So for a few dollars MS, HP,Yahoo just to name a few would sell you out for a $. Human rights come second to the all mighty dollar for thoughs companies. Google diserves a Medal and the others seem to be nothing but money grubbing cowards.

Of course one way to look at it is that if they do keep their presence there, who in China is going to want to use their G-Mail when their (overly oppressive) government can snoop it anyway.

It's probably because the attack also stole some of Google's IP. They don't want to lose more of it. If that's the reason, shareholders will certainly approve of the decision.

I absolutely do not believe Google is leaving because of mail accounts being hacked, but because the hackers used Google's own information system, that is used to give the US government access to all g-mail clients mail.
That is why we are not getting any real information on this so called hack...
Second the hackers are most likely "friends" of their China competeter. So they most likely also stole Google's source code... "That is a CRIME"!!!
Doubt Google could care less about their mail customers, if they could make money of them/it.

It's all about the plumbers
because China is not a grook!

Google and China are bringing up a 21st century battle of democracy and freedom verse Communism and restricted personal freedom. When we started using cloud computing systems we saw the HUGE area of security problems being created in cross country internet usage. Thrown in that the entire world is "outsourcing" computer stuff to Southeast Asian countries, and you have a plan for these socio-technology issues going to ahead. We study search demand/supply trends from around the world to find profitable niches and products. A niche, or hot predictions, is not just a demand side issue, but a supply/demand curve. If you predict IPHONE apps will take off, and there are already 100,000 aps, then you aren't going to hit that one. If you see that demand for cell phone radiation shields is going nuts and there are only two suppliers, then you can be pretty sure that it will be a good year for those 2 supplies. The software at www.TheInternetTimeMachine.com studies both the demand (search volume) and supply (think "results" in Google). The Google Phone is generating much more buzz right now then say the Apple Tablet.
Cheers,
Curt
Here is a video on what I mean.. http://bit.ly/SupplyDemandCurves

Like the shareholder's stereotype above said, Google may soon be out of business in China.
Still, one could not expect that a shareholder would actually understand what ideology is all about, anyway.
To deal with the chinese government despite its political practices is to support and strenghten both.
There's another way to look at things, though. Google is an information company. They need people to input, directly or indirectly, and to consume a lot of information daily. So Google's actions don't have anything to do with "Don't be evil", they just need the peoples' freedom of speech to strive.
Any way that you spin it, the shareholder was very short sighted, as expected.

For company officials to decide, without shareholder approval, to perform actions that could potentially remove the largest emerging market for products/services from being accessible to Google is amazing. This is being dealt with like a college dorm dust-up and not like the multi-billion dollar business it is. Every day in corporate America companies look the other way over human rights violations and environmental nightmares in search of profit - Walmart does it, our petroleum producers do it, even smug Apple does it - and the shareholders EXPECT it.

What else that is interesting is this isn't a stand over right or wrong or action would have been taken months/years ago - to the point of why even setting up a China office if you are so against the gov't actions? Cearly the hackers belittled Google's "ego" which is what caused this action - and the HR hacks have done a good job to spin it to divert from the recent concerns over Google's treatment of privacy issues. WAG the DOG.

This is the fact I find amazing that nobody has reported on.... Google the darling of wallstreet could slide terribly over this action, and in my mind, they deserve just that.