Cyber Attacks May Mean the End of Google China

Search engine giant Google announced yesterday that they have been targeted by cyber attacks of “varying degrees on a regular basis”. Google’s Chief legal Officer David Drummond also mentioned that Google was not the sole recipient of these attacks and that it included at least 20 other companies from a variety of different industries. Google investigation thus far has led them to pass along the details of this cyber activity to these additional companies.

It is apparent that the attackers attempted to access Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists and Google is reporting that the malicious activity was for the most part unsuccessful. The unauthorized access consisted of two Gmail accounts being compromised and the attackers were only able to view the account creation dates, email subject lines and basic account information. Google immediately implemented changes to their architecture to enhance security for its users.

This latest round of cyber attacks has promoted Google to review their business ventures in China. In the interim Google has decided to not to continue censoring delivered results to Chinese web surfers claiming that they do not wish to further limit free speech.

This could very well be the end of Google operations in China resulting in google.cn and local offices being shut down completely.

What does this mean for Search Engine Optimization?

Until a final decision by the powers that be at Google and the Chinese Government the verdict is still out on how this may affect the search engine marketing world.  One would think that if Google pulled out of the Chinese market it could have a negative impact on companies that have heavily invested in optimizing and targeting this already massive and growing market.