The United States will issue a formal protest to the Chinese government demanding an explanation for the cyber attack on Google that the company says originated from China.
"We will be issuing a formal demarche in Beijing," likely early next week, to express US unease about the incident, State Department spokesman Philip J. Crowley said in Washington yesterday. A demarche is a diplomatic protest.
Google said on January 11th it would stop censoring results on its search engine in China, as required by that country's government, because of "highly sophisticated" attacks on its website and the e-mail accounts of Chinese rights activists.
Google said the attacks included theft of its intellectual property and were targeted at least 20 other companies in technology, finance and chemicals. The company, owner of the world's most popular Internet search engine, said it may end its operations in China.
China's Ministry of Commerce has accused the United States of "backsliding" toward protectionism and said companies must comply with Chinese laws.
Yahoo got pulled into the growing row between China and Google, as its Chinese partner condemned Yahoo's statements supporting Google while a source revealed the search giant had stayed silent about cyber-attacks.
Yahoo knew it had been a target of sophisticated Chinese cyber attacks on US firms before Google alerted the company to them, but remained silent while its bigger rival went public, a source told Reuters
Yahoo's Chinese partner, e-commerce firm Alibaba Group, in which it owns a 40 per cent stake, nonetheless called "reckless" Yahoo's comment last week that it stood aligned with Google's positions.
A Google spokeswoman today denied Chinese online reports that it has already decided to shut down its google.cn site.
An exit by Google would leave China without a foreign company operating independently to serve more than 330 million Web users.
Local operator Baidu, based in Beijing, accounted for 58.4 per cent of the country's search engine market last quarter, compared with Google's 35.6 per cent, according to researcher Analysys International.
Bloomberg