GOOGLE, YOUTUBE & FACEBOOK POWERFUL THAN FEDS (1ST AMEND CENSORSHIP)

GOOGLE, YOUTUBE & FACEBOOK MORE POWERFUL THAN FEDS:

INTERNET GIANTS STILL CENSOR VIEWS OPPOSING OBAMA & SOROS' AGENDA AS EXTREMIST.

WHAT ABOUT THE FIRST AMENDMENT?

IS CONGRESS AFRAID OF GOOGLE, YOUTUBE & FACEBOOK?

IS OBAMA STILL PRESIDENT OF THE US?


Sources: Infowars, Jihad Watch, YouTube


******* YOUTUBE DECLARES WAR ON POLITICALLY INCORRECT OPINIONS

Google-owned platform demonetizes "controversial" content


A new “advertiser friendly” policy introduced by YouTube will punish those who express politically incorrect opinions or dare to offend viewers by de-monetizing their content.

The new rules have sparked an outcry from the YouTube community because they are so incredibly restrictive.

YouTube will now retain the right to demonetize any videos that contain, “Controversial or sensitive subjects and events, including subjects related to war, political conflicts, natural disasters and tragedies, even if graphic imagery is not shown.”

“Inappropriate language, including harassment, profanity and vulgar language,” is also being demonetized.

YouTube’s new policy will completely disincentivize YouTubers from discussing politically incorrect topics or expressing controversial opinions because they know they will be punished for doing so.

Many YouTubers make a living off their channel and will therefore be walking on eggshells to avoid the company’s stringent new rules.

The new policy bears some hallmarks of the Communist Chinese government’s “social credit score system,” whereby Internet users are punished by private companies and their peers for expressing unpopular views on social media.

The move is primarily designed to scare away YouTubers from making anti-establishment political content, but prominent YouTubers are already reporting that videos on everything from acne solutions to tips on combating depression are being demonetized because they are not “advertiser friendly”.

“The channels that self-identify as vulnerable by these advertising guidelines seem to be news channels covering sensitive real-world topics,”reports Kotaku.

Prominent YouTuber Philip DeFranco responded to the controversy by vowing, “I’m not going to censor myself,” despite the fact that dozens of his videos have already been demonetized.

Google-owned YouTube is of course a private company and can enforce any rules it likes, but with the advent of such corporations becoming so large (more powerful than countries in some cases), in addition to them insisting on being treated as a public utility, the move is a massive stab in the back for the content creators who helped build the platform in the first place.

As Matt Drudge warned about when he appeared on the Alex Jones Show nearly a year ago, creators allowing their content to be swallowed up by social media ghettos was always going to lead to this outcome.

“I don’t know why they’ve been successful in pushing everybody into these little ghettos, these Facebooks, these Tweets, these Instagrams,” Drudge told Jones. “This is ghetto, this is corporate; they’re taking your energy and you’re getting nothing in return.”

The video below sums up the impact the new rules will have on YouTube unless they are reversed.

YOUTUBE & GOOGLE REMOVES CENSORSHIP OF SOME LGBT CONTENT AMID BACKLASH

YOUTUBE & GOOGLE REMOVES CENSORSHIP OF SOME LGBT CONTENT FOLLOWING BACKLASH:

HOWEVER CONTINUES TO CENSOR CONTENT OPPOSING OBAMA & SOROS' AGENDA.

IS OBAMA STILL PRESIDENT OF THE US?


Sources: Endgaget, The Guardian, YouTube


****** YouTube pledges to 'fix' Restricted Mode's LGBTQ+ censorship

The company says that filtering out the videos along with mature content was a 'mistake.'

After a post by Rowan Ellis, many people recently noticed that YouTube's Restricted Mode filter consistently blocked videos containing LGBTQ+ related content. Despite tweeting that it is supposed to only filter mature content, users tracked down selections like this Tegan & Sara video that were blocked despite being incredibly tame.

In a blog post tonight, YouTube VP Johanna Wright stated that "we must and will do a better job."

The exec admitted that "...this feature isn't working the way it should.

We're sorry and we're going to fix it." While claiming that only 1.5 percent of traffic comes with Restricted Mode turned on, Wright also said that as a matter of principle, access to "important content and different points of view" should be allowed. YouTube has already manually unblocked a few videos where the system made "mistakes in understanding context and nuances," but she also writes that it will take time to roll out more changes.

PEWDIEPIE FIRED BY YOUTUBE & DISNEY FOR DEFAMING JEWS & BLASPHEMING JESUS

PEWDIEPIE FIRED BY YOUTUBE & DISNEY FOR DEFAMING JEWS & BLASPHEMING JESUS:

OTHER YOUTUBERS CENSORED FOR BULLYING.


Sources: TIME, What's Trending, YouTube


****** The Richest YouTube Star of All Time Just Got Fired by Disney


PewDiePie could lose millions of dollars.

If you play video games, or are under the age of 20, you’ve likely heard of PewDiePie. He’s the irreverent YouTube vlogger (or video blogger) who reviews products from Nintendo, Sony-Playstation and the like, while also poking fun at Internet culture.

He also happens to be the richest YouTube star of all time:

Forbes says he made approximately $15 million last year, more than anyone else doing similar work.

In total, his videos have been viewed 14.7 billion times, more than any other individual on YouTube.

And with 53 million subscribers, he has nearly double as many subscriptions as the video streaming service’s next top star.

But this week, the reputation of PewDiePie, whose real name is Felix Kjellberg, suffered a major blow:

Disney, the company that owns the studio that helps promote Kjellberg’s videos, severed its ties with him after the Wall Street Journal reported that Kjellberg has posted nine videos since August that include offensive material.

In some of the videos, he paid two shirtless Indian men to make a video holding up a sign that said “Death to All Jews.” In another, he showed a man dressed as Jesus Christ saying, “Hitler did absolutely nothing wrong.”

which is owned by Google, followed suit, announcing it would pull Kjellberg’s channel from its premium advertising program and cancel the second season of his reality show, Variety reported.

Kjellberg responded to the initial Wall Street Journalreport in a Tumblr post, saying he was “trying to show how crazy the modern world is, specifically some of the services available online.

“I understand that these jokes were ultimately offensive,” he added. “As laughable as it is to believe that I might actually endorse these people, to anyone unsure on my standpoint regarding hate-based groups: No, I don’t support these people in any way.”

While it is too early to say what the lasting impact of his getting dropped will be, NeoReach, a social media data company, told MONEY that losing the YouTube agreement could end up costing Kjellberg millions of dollars.

AYESHA CURRY'S TWITTER RANT BACKLASH IS RACIST (REMEMBER TIPPER GORE?)

AYESHA CURRY'S TWITTER RANT BACKLASH IS RACIST (REMEMBER TIPPER GORE?)

IGNORE STEPHEN A. SMITH'S SEXIST, MISOGYNIST REMARKS.

IN AMERICA FREE SPEECH ISN'T COLORBLIND.

DOES ANYONE REMEMBER TIPPER GORE'S CENSORSHIP PR STUNT?

IS IT POSSIBLE AYESHA CURRY'S ANTI-NBA TWEETS COULD BE AN INTENTIONAL PR STUNT?

Sources: ESPN, Huffpost, Twitter, NBA, Rollingstone, Oprah, Village Voice, Undefeated, YouTube

Ayesha Curry, wife of NBA Superstar Stephen Curry is being slammed for her recent tweets about the NBA being rigged.

Many people have previously expressed this same sentiment about the NBA Play-offs, so why is Ayesha being rebuked?

Is it due to the fact that her husband Stepen is currently employed by the NBA or does RACISM play a factor in this backlash against Ayesha?

And why is Sports Commentator Stephen A. Smith (a BLACK Man) comparing Ayesha Curry to Lebron James' wife Savannah?

Both Women are BLACK, however that is where the similarity stops.

Since the husbands of Ayesha Curry and Savannah James will play for rival teams during the 2016 Play-Off games, is it possible Ayesha is strategically posting negative NBA Twitter rants as a PR stunt?

Has the Mainstream Media forgotten about TIPPER GORE, former wife of AL GORE?

When her husband was still employed as Vice-President in the Clinton administration, TIPPER GORE launched a national campaign to shut up and Censor the music of BLACK Rappers.

Yet......

No one, not even the NAACP told TIPPER GORE to "Shut up and stay in her place".

TIPPER GORE used her fake "Family Values" Hip Hop Music Censorship campaign to bring attention to HERSELF but no one said a word.

Not even Bill and Hillary Clinton!

******* Stephen A. Smith Essentially Tells Ayesha Curry To Shut Her Mouth And Know Her Place

“You are not just Ayesha Curry. You are Steph Curry’s wife.”

What many people thought would be a night of champagne celebrations for the Curry family instead turned out rather badly for them on Thursday night.

Stephen continued to lack MVP-level sharpness in Game 6 of the NBA Finals, fouling out and then getting ejected for throwing his mouthpiece at some rich kid in a loss that pushed the series to seven games. But most of the conversation following the game centered around his wife, who hopped on Twitter to accuse the Cavs of holding up the Warriors’ family bus and the NBA of rigging the Finals for money. (She quickly deleted the latter tweet.)

TWITTER/@AYESHACURRY

Ayesha joins the NBA conspiracy theorist community.

Steph defended his wife after the game, saying, “Everybody says stuff where you get caught in the moment ... I don’t fault her from showing some emotion on Twitter.” But on ESPN’s Friday morning episode of “First Take,” “analysts” Stephen A. Smith and Skip Bayless completely faulted Ayesha for showing emotion.

Smith spoke at length (as seen in the above video), in fact, about how NBA wives should and should not act. He focused the conversation around wives of the NBA Finals’ two rival stars: LeBron James and Steph. Smith thinks that Ayesha, a relative rookie when it comes to the superstar NBA lifestyle, should be quiet and act more like LeBron’s wife Savannah Brinson, a 13-year veteran of the NBA family. 

“[Brinson] never brings attention to herself. She never tweets and calls out the lying. Nobody, nobody is more scrutinized than her husband, but yet she thinks about how she represents him,” Smith said.  

And there’s nothing wrong or right about that! It’s Savannah’s choice to stay low and work on a small business. It’s also Ayesha’s choice to parlay her popularity as a family-first social media presence into a Food Network show. They’re different women who are making their own mark, if Smith couldn’t tell.

But he can’t, because his sexism won’t allow him to recognize Ayesha as an independent person from her husband. “You are not just Ayesha Curry. You are Steph Curry’s wife,” he shockingly said (and Bayless agreed!). Apparently, once a woman marries an NBA player, they no longer have their own identity. They’re merely ornamental.  

Smith claims that because “everybody veers towards Steph Curry,” we’re ignoring Ayesha’s tweets. Quite the contrary, as much has been made of her tweets Thursday morning. 

“If this were Savannah acting like this, do you know how much heat LeBron James may have taken?” Smith continued to argue. 

Savannah “acting like this” may indeed cause some heat for LeBron. Yet in the spectrum of overly critical LeBron stories, Smith’s “acting like this” hypothetical would likely amount to nothing. Would LeBron and Savannah suffer if she started defending LeBron’s flopping? No. Will Ayesha and Steph suffer because of a few tweets? No. When you’re Steph Curry or LeBron James, two of the biggest athletes alive, it’ll take a lot more than heated tweets to “hurt yourself or your husband or your family in any way,” as Smith said.

Ayesha evidently watched Smith’s diatribe, and responded on Twitter immediately: 

Seeing the tweet, Smith responded live on “First Take” and continued to explain why she was out of line.

“It is not me. It is you,” he said.

No it isn’t, Steven. No it isn’t. 

OBAMA ADMIN BLOCKS PUBLIC INFO & SOCIAL MEDIA ACCESS (GOV'T PROPAGANDA)

OBAMA ADMIN BLOCKS PUBLIC INFORMATION & SOCIAL MEDIA ACCESS (GOV'T PROPAGANDA):

INCLUDES YOUTUBE AND ON-AIR CABLE NEWS ABOUT RADICAL ISLAM.

~ 8 ways the Obama Administration is blocking information

The fight for access to public information has never been harder, Associated Press Washington Bureau Chief Sally Buzbee said recently at a joint meeting of the American Society of News Editors, the Associated Press Media Editors and the Associated Press Photo Managers.

The problem extends across the entire federal government and is now trickling down to state and local governments.

Here is Buzbee’s list of eight ways the Obama administration is making it hard for journalists to find information and cover the news:

1) As the United States ramps up its fight against Islamic militants, the public can’t see any of it. News organizations can’t shoot photos or video of bombers as they take off — there are no embeds. In fact, the administration won’t even say what country the S. bombers fly from.

2) The White House once fought to get cameramen, photographers and reporters into meetings the president had with foreign leaders overseas. That access has become much rarer. Think about the message that sends other nations about how the world’s leading democracy deals with the media: Keep them out and let them use handout photos.

3) Guantanamo: The big important 9/11 trial is finally coming up. But we aren’t allowed to see most court filings in real time — even of nonclassified material. So at hearings, we can’t follow what’s happening. We don’t know what prosecutors are asking for, or what defense attorneys are arguing.

4) Information about Guantanamo that was routinely released under President George W. Bush is now kept secret. The military won’t release the number of prisoners on hunger strike or the number of assaults on guards. Photo and video coverage is virtually nonexistent.

5) Day-to-day intimidation of sources is chilling. AP’s transportation reporter’s sources say that if they are caught talking to her, they will be fired. Even if they just give her facts, about safety, for example. Government press officials say their orders are to squelch anything controversial or that makes the administration look bad.

6) One of the media — and public’s — most important legal tools, the Freedom of Information Act, is under siege. Requests for information under FOIA have become slow and expensive. Many federal agencies simply don’t respond at all in a timely manner, forcing news organizations to sue each time to force action.

7) The administration uses FOIAs as a tip service to uncover what news organizations are pursuing. Requests are now routinely forwarded to political appointees. At the agency that oversees the new health care law, for example, political appointees now handle the FOIA requests.

8) The administration is trying to control the information that state and local officials can give out. The FBI has directed local police not to disclose details about surveillance technology the police departments use to sweep up cellphone data. In some cases, federal officials have formally intervened in state open records cases, arguing for secrecy.

Sources: Associated Press, Infowars, Youtube

Juan Williams Unjustly Fired From NPR For Muslim Remarks: "Nanny State"

NPR Fires News Analyst After Remarks About Muslims

NPR has fired longtime news analyst Juan Williams, also a commentator on the Fox News Channel, after he told Bill O'Reilly that he gets nervous when he sees people in Muslim garb on an airplane.

In a statement late Wednesday, National Public Radio said it was terminating Williams' contract as a senior news analyst over his comments on Fox's "The O'Reilly Factor."

NPR executives had previously complained about his remarks on Fox, including saying first lady Michelle Obama could be a liability for her husband shortly after his inauguration.

The latest comments came Monday, when O'Reilly brought on guests to discuss his own appearance last week on ABC's "The View," during which Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg walked off the set to protest his views on Muslims.

"Where am I going wrong here, Juan?" O'Reilly asked.

Williams, 56, responded that too much political correctness can get in the way of reality.

"I mean, look, Bill, I'm not a bigot. You know the kind of books I've written about the civil rights movement in this country," Williams said. "But when I get on a plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous."

A phone message left for Williams at his home in Washington was not immediately returned Thursday morning.

Williams appeared briefly Thursday on Fox News and said he was abruptly fired Wednesday by Ellen Weiss, NPR's vice president for news. He said he told Weiss he meant what he said on the O'Reilly show, but that she told him he had made a bigoted statement and crossed a line.

"I said, 'You mean I don't even get the chance to come in and we do this eyeball-to-eyeball, person-to-person, have a conversation? I've been there more than 10 years," Williams said. He said Weiss responded that "there's nothing you can say that would change my mind."

Before Williams was fired, the Council on American-Islamic Relations said such commentary from a journalist about other racial, ethnic or religious minority groups would not be tolerated.

"NPR should address the fact that one of its news analysts seems to believe that all airline passengers who are perceived to be Muslim can legitimately be viewed as security threats," CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad said.

Later Wednesday, NPR issued a statement saying Williams' remarks "were inconsistent with our editorial standards and practices, and undermined his credibility as a news analyst with NPR."

"Juan has been a valuable contributor to NPR and public radio for many years and we did not make this decision lightly or without regret," NPR spokeswoman Dana Davis Rehm said in an e-mailed statement.

Conservative bloggers defended Williams on Thursday, blasting NPR's decision.

"All Juan Williams did is say both exactly how he feels and how many, many other Americans feel on this subject," wrote Erick Erickson on his "Red State" blog. "The man's body of work makes clear he is no bigot. But we sure can't offend Muslims, can we?"

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich also weighed in, telling Fox News that Congress should investigate NPR for censorship and consider cutting off its public funding.

Only a small part of NPR's budget is provided by Congress through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. O'Reilly also called Thursday for an immediate suspension of taxpayer funding for NPR and said that Williams reflected the views of many Americans.

Williams' appearances on Fox have been an issue for NPR in the past, including his remarks about Michelle Obama on a 2009 episode of "The O'Reilly Factor."

"Michelle Obama, you know, she's got this Stokely Carmichael in a designer dress thing going. ... her instinct is to start with this blame America, you know, I'm the victim," Williams said, according to an account by NPR's Ombudsman Alicia Shepard. Carmichael was a civil rights activist.

At the time, Shepard wrote that Williams was the network's biggest "lightning rod," drawing hundreds of complaints. NPR executives then asked Williams to stop using the NPR name when he appears on O'Reilly's show.

On Monday, he was identified as a Fox News contributor.

Williams was a longtime reporter, columnist and editorial writer at The Washington Post. He has written extensively on the civil rights movement, including a book on the African-American religious experience and a biography of Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.

Sources: Fox News, NPR, Washington Post, Wikipedia

Chinese May Finally Receive Web 2.0 Freedom; Obama Supports Google

Google and China: A Win for Liberty and Strategy


Isaac Mao saw this coming. In early 2007, a year after Google (GOOG) launched a China-based version of its search engine that adhered to Beijing's strict censorship rules, the prominent Chinese blogger posted an open letter to founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Mao described the frustration he and other Chinese Google fans felt as a company with the informal motto "Don't be evil" obeyed policies forbidding access to sites deemed taboo by China's government. Google's self-censorship "hurts those loyal users a lot," wrote Mao, who said it was "high time to change Google policy back to the right track."

Now the 37-year-old Mao seems to be getting his wish. After Google's Jan. 12 announcement that it would stop censoring search results on Google.cn—in response to what the company called "highly sophisticated" hacking from China of its computer systems and the infiltration of Gmail accounts of human-rights activists—Internet users in China had new hope they might gain access to information on the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, the Dalai Lama, and other banned topics. The company says it will quit China if it can't run a permanently unfiltered search engine. It's hard, though, to imagine the Chinese giving Google, or anyone else, that kind of autonomy.

An exit from the mainland would uphold the right of free expression and acquit Google in the eyes of those who protested its initial complicity with Chinese restrictions. "It's a smart move," says Mao. But before heaping too much praise on Page and Brin, it's worth noting that a pullout would also end a bruising commercial battle. In the U.S. Google has over 60% of the search market. In China its share of search profits is 35.6%, a distant No. 2 to local champion Baidu's 58.4%, according to China data tracker Analysys International. No wonder, says David Wolf, CEO of Beijing-based advisory firm Wolf Group Asia, "Google appears to be more interested in winning hearts and minds than in sustaining its business in China."

China, which has more than 330 million Web users, has not been kind to American Web giants. Instead of replicating their U.S. success, eBay (EBAY), Yahoo! (YHOO), and Microsoft (MSFT) portal MSN found they couldn't go it alone against such domestic rivals as Baidu, e-commerce leader Alibaba's Taobao, and instant messaging power Tencent. Even after U.S. players teamed up with local partners, they still trailed.

Google struggled from the get-go. Despite its submission to censorship, its YouTube business was regularly blocked, and censors still occasionally restricted access to the entire search engine, not just results to offending queries. After Google announced that it would alert Chinese users every time it provided them with a censored result, the government-run media attacked the company for allegedly operating without a license. Chinese Net users even mocked Google's Chinese name, a transliteration of the word Google that was rendered inelegantly as "Valley Song." Google also had to wage a bitter court battle in 2005 before winning permission to hire a brilliant Microsoft executive, Kai-Fu Lee, to head its China business. Lee quit in September.

Google says financial considerations have nothing to do with its challenge to the Beijing censors. Outsiders disagree. "Google is in a really tough spot," says Bill Bishop, a Beijing-based angel investor in Chinese startups. "There is no long-term potential." By citing the hacking and censorship issues as reasons for leaving, Google can end its agony and "get this incredible lift in brand equity," he says. Google won't lose much financially: Its Chinese business was on target for 2010 sales of $600 million, according to JPMorgan Chase (JPM). That's a fraction of Google's estimated overall sales this year of $26 billion.

The irony is that the main Google site, Google.com, is popular with China's English-speaking elite, who find local search engines insufficiently global. Sounds like the makings of a good business. Such logic doesn't always work in China.




Obama Backs Google In Dispute With China


Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, demanded "an explanation" for Beijing of Google's allegation that its Gmail email system was infiltrated. "The ability to operate with confidence in cyberspace is critical in a modern society and economy," she said.

Robert Gibbs, Mr Obama's press secretary, emphasized that the President backed Internet Freedom and said that Google had coordinated with the Obama administration before it had acted.

The alleged cyber attacks have further strained China-US relations that are already fraying over issues of trade, currency, climate change and arms sales to Taiwan.

"We have been briefed by Google on these allegations, which raise very serious concerns and questions," Mrs Clinton said.

Mrs Clinton had also met executives from Google and Microsoft, as well as with Cisco Systems, which provides much of China's internet infrastructure, to discuss how to stop countries from "stifling" access to information, the state department added.

Next week the US is to launch a new technology policy to help citizens in other countries to gain access to an uncensored internet.

The Chinese authorities said they were seeking clarification over Google's demand it be allowed to operate its Google.cn search engine free from the increasingly draconian censorship of the Great Firewall of China.

China has spent millions trying to project it's 'soft power', however analysts said its rulers now faced a choice between protecting its power at home and suffering the embarrassment of being rejected by one of the free world's biggest brands with negative consequences for the investment climate.

"It is setting us up for a clash, and it's interesting to see who backs down. It's the US versus China, but the companies will be lobbying," said Chris McNally, a China analyst at the East-West Center in Hawaii.

A spokesman for Google said the company was 'in talks' with the authorities, while outside Google's offices in Beijing a handful of citizens braved the cold to lay flowers 'in mourning' at the prospect of Google's departure from China.

Despite hopes that China would start to relax freedom of speech restrictions after the 2008 Olympics, China has in fact tightened of internet controls, blocking popular as social networkings sites such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

The issue of censorship was raised by the US President Barack Obama on his maiden visit to China last November when he told an online town hall that he was "a big supporter of non-censorship."

"I can tell you that in the United States, the fact that we have free internet – or unrestricted internet access – is a source of strength, and I think should be encouraged," he said, to the evident irritation of his hosts.

The decision by Google to break ranks from other big corporations doing business in China and openly criticize the country's autocratic leadership comes after four rocky years during which Google was forced to compromise its core belief in the free-flow of information.

Announcing its sudden change of heart on the company's blog site, David Drummond, Google's chief legal officer, said: "These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered – combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the Web – have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China.

"We are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all," he said.

Human rights groups, which have criticized Google's decision to submit Chinese censorship after setting up in China in 2006, applauded the company's stand. The New York-based Human Rights Watch described it as "an important step" to protect human rights online.

"Through international pressure, finally a big business in the West has come to realize its own conscience," said the prominent Chinese Dissident Wei Jingsheng who lives in exile in the United States after 18 years in prison in China.

"Some Western businesses thought that by making compromises with the Chinese communists' regime, they could do business as they wished.

However, this is impossible because the Chinese government would not be satisfied."



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Sources: Business Week, Telegraph.co.uk, CNBC, Google Maps

Google Mulls Leaving China After Major Attacks! "Don't Be Evil"

Google May Exit China After Sophisticated Attack



Google Inc., owner of the most popular Internet search engine, may shut its Chinese Web site and offices after a “highly sophisticated” cyber attack aimed at the e-mail accounts of human-rights activists.

Google also said at least 20 other large companies in industries ranging from finance to technology, media and chemicals had been targeted by hackers. The attacks, combined with attempts in the past year to limit free speech on the Web, has led the company to decide it will stop censoring results on its Google.cn site, it said.

A departure would follow four years of clashes over censorship and highlight the challenges global companies face operating in a one-party state that controls the flow of information. A pullout would deprive Google of an estimated $600 million in annual revenue from China’s 338 million Internet users and may help domestic Baidu Inc. extend its lead in the world’s largest online market.

“We are beginning to see companies saying ‘we don’t have to be here,’” said Duncan Clark, chairman of Beijing-based business consultancy BDA China Ltd. “We’re certainly seeing more of a trend toward protectionism, but also a feeling that there isn’t a permissive attitude toward foreign companies generally.”

Baidu Shares Rise

Google fell $6.68, or 1.1 percent, to $583.80 in extended trading after closing at $590.48 on the Nasdaq Stock Market, while Baidu’s American depositary receipts added 6.8 percent after the end of regular Nasdaq trading.

Dozens of accounts of Gmail users, who are advocates of Human Rights in the U.S., China and Europe, were accessed, most likely through phishing scams or malware on the users’ computers, Google said. With phishing scams, hackers pretending to be legitimate Web sites ask users to divulge confidential information, while malware includes programs that record users’ keystrokes as they type in passwords.

The Chinese government’s Human Rights record “remained poor and worsened in some areas” during 2008, the U.S. State Department said in a February 2009 report on human rights practices in countries around the world. Authorities in China monitored various types of communication, including telephone, e-mail and the Internet, the department said.

Wang Lijian, a Beijing-based spokesman for the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said he couldn’t comment as he was unaware of the situation. China’s foreign ministry declined to comment.

More Attacks

Mountain View, California-based Google said it’s notifying other companies that were attacked and is working with U.S. authorities.

“It’s probably too early to think that Google is pulling out of China altogether given how big the China market is and will be,” said Jeff Papp, a senior analyst at Oberweis Asset Management Inc., which manages about $900 million, including Baidu stock.

The company was projected to generate revenue of about $600 million from China in 2010, according to estimates by Imran Khan, an analyst at JPMorgan Chase & Co. in New York.

Google hired Lee Kai-fu from Microsoft Corp. in 2005 to head its operations in China, where the Internet company started a local-language search service that excludes results censored by the Chinese government. The efforts were part of Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt’s to expand in a market that overtook the U.S. as the biggest Web market in 2008.

Yahoo China

Google and Yahoo Inc. were among companies that were criticized by U.S. lawmakers in 2006 for complying with the Chinese government’s restrictions on the Internet.

Yahoo Founder Jerry Yang said in 2005 that a court order obliged the Sunnyvale, California-based company to hand over user records that led to the conviction of a Chinese journalist.

Yahoo spokeswoman May Petry said the company is preparing a comment.

Baidu accounted for 63.9 percent of China’s Internet search market in the third quarter, compared with 31.3 percent for Google, according to researcher Analysys International. Baidu declined to comment on Google’s decision.

“There’s no other competitor, so if Google pulls out, Baidu is left by itself,” said Erwin Sanft, an analyst at BNP Paribas SA in Hong Kong. “If they pull out of China, it’s very hard to really get back in the market and still have a similar presence.”

Don’t Be Evil


The move signals Google is hewing closer to its “Don’t be evil” motto, said Heath Terry, an analyst at FBR Capital Markets in New York. Still, Google is still a “long way away from getting out of China,” Terry said. The company can threaten to leave the country because China accounts for such a small piece of Google’s sales, he said.

“This is their way of opening up this important conversation,” Terry said. “This is their way of starting to move the conversation forward.”

China has more Internet users than the total population of the U.S., according to the China Internet Network Information Center, a government-backed agency that licenses online domain names.

Google said the attack, which occurred in the middle of December, originated in China and resulted in intellectual property being stolen.

Gmail Acounts

Google said two Gmail accounts appear to have been accessed as part of the attack. The information gathered was limited to account information, such as the date the account was created, as well as the subject lines of e-mails, Google said. The contents of e-mails weren’t exposed.

State Department officials didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. Federal Bureau of Investigation spokesman Jason Pack declined to comment.

Access to Google’s YouTube video site was blocked in China after Tibet’s government-in-exile released a video on March 20 that it said showed Chinese police beating protesters. The video was described as a fabrication by China’s official Xinhua News Agency.

Google also has drawn complaints from a Chinese writers’ group about its online book-scanning project. Google should stop scanning books without permission, the China Writers Association said in November. Google apologized to authors this week for a lack of communication.

Last year, China pushed personal-computer makers to install filtering software on their machines. The government backed away from that requirement in June, though it later said it would require the software on computers in schools and Internet cafes.



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Sources: AP, Google Maps, Bloomberg, CNN, Mox News, Youtube, Google Maps