Why The Google Announcement About China Is A Really Big Deal

Google made a huge announcement today.  Essentially, because of an attempt by the Chinese Government to hack the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists, Google has made a decision that will likely lead to their leaving China.

In 2006, in order to make the deal in China, Google agreed to censor some search results. They announced today that they are no longer willing to continue censoring results.

This is a big deal because it is not often that Corporations the size of Google, with access to the market of markets that China is, decide to give it up because it’s the right thing to do.

In a time when reports about huge American corporations so often make us cringe in embarrassment, Google has given us a reason to be proud of one.

Here is the link to the Google Blog post with the Announcement about China.