China's Cyber-Attacks Pushed Google Over the Edge (NASDAQ:GOOG)

Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) Co-founder Sergey Brin hit the limit when China's Cyber-Attacks brought up Brin's own memories of fleeing the Soviet Union as a child as he was instrumental in the decision of exiting China.

(WSJ.com) Behind Google Inc.'s dramatic decision to shutter its China-based search engine this week was co-founder Sergey Brin's change of heart about the compromises required to do business in a land that was increasingly reminding him of his native Soviet Union.

The beginning of that change came just after the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, Mr. Brin says in an interview about the China decision. As the glow of the Olympics faded, he says, the Chinese government began ratcheting up its Web censoring and interfering more with Google's business. Around that time, he says, the murky rules of doing business in China grew even murkier.

"China was ever-present," he says. "One out of five meetings I attended had some component that applied to China in a different way than other countries."

The 36-year-old co-founder says he was also moved by growing evidence in China of repressive behavior he remembered from the Soviet Union, which he and his parents fled when he was six years old. He says memories of that time—having his home visited by Russian police; the anti-Semitic discrimination against his father—emboldened his view that it was time to abandon Google's policy.

China has "made great strides against poverty and whatnot," Mr. Brin says. "But nevertheless, in some aspects of their policy, particularly with respect to censorship, with respect to surveillance of dissidents, I see the same earmarks of totalitarianism, and I find that personally quite troubling."

On Jan.12, Google said it would stop self-censoring its search engine in China, citing cyber-attacks it believes were motivated by an attempt to spy on Chinese activists' emails. On Monday, Google implemented that policy, routing mainland users of its search engine to a site in Hong Kong that the company wasn't censoring.

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SOURCE: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704266504575141064259998090.html