According to Google, a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on Google corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google. The attack also was aimed at Chinese human-rights activists using Gmail. Experts say as many as 30 international corporations were also victims of the cyberattack.
The accusation, along with a threat to shut down its Chinese Google site, was unusually blunt and public for businesses in China. It soon escalated into heated exchanges between Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Chinese officials, who denied any role in the attacks.
Noticeably absent from the rumble was Microsoft, which has extensive business dealings with China and its Bing search engine is fighting to gain a beachhead. CEO Steve Ballmer was critical of Google's threat to leave China. In a speech before oil executives in Houston, Forbes reports that Ballmer said, "People are always trying to break into other people's data. There's always somebody trying to break into Microsoft."
Ballmer called America the most extreme when it comes to free speech. But even the United States, he said, bans child porn. If you subscribe to Ballmerian business logic, then it makes sense that he would say Microsoft would follow Chinese censorship demands in the same way it abides by the laws of every country in which it does business. He added for the Houston crowd, Saudi censorship doesn't keep the United States from buying Saudi oil.
Google can once again play the scrappy and even principled underdog.A la Ballmer, Google's stand seems like an irrational business decision. But history doesn't often show business decisions as the sole compass for a good or free society. (Source: Jon Talton, The Seattle Times, Jan 30, 2010).