giant was actively negotiating with China over censorship that would
end soon. His remarks came two months after the company revealed
in-country attempts to hack into the GMail accounts of human rights
activists and declared that it would stop censoring results on
google.cn ― something it has yet to do.
"We are in active negotiations with the Chinese government," Eric
Schmidt told reporters at a media summit in Abu Dhabi, as quoted by
the Wall Street Journal.
"I'm going to use the word 'soon', which I will not define otherwise,"
Schmidt said, according to Reuters. "There is no specific timetable.
Something will happen soon."
Schmidt's remarks were the first confirmation by Google that it was
even talking to China, though Bejing said as much last week. But the
remarks did nothing to clarify what Google's intentions are after its
stunning statement 60 days ago that it was prepared to abandon the
market if things did not change.
The GMail attack, which targeted 20 tech companies including Adobe,
Yahoo and Intel, also sought source code, and resulted in Google
losing some intellectual property. But Google co-founder Sergey Brin
was reportedly the driving force behind the decision to rpublicly
repudiate its Chinese censorship.
Schmidt did not say what the two parties were negotiating about ― or
even what there was to negotiate about, given Google's seemingly
unequivocal Jan. 12 statement decrying the status quo. The company did
not at the time say it when it would leave if things did not change,
but made clear it knew the stakes were that high, given the Chinese
government's intransigence in such matters.
"We have decided 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," David
Drummond, Google's chief legal officer and senior vice president for
corporate development, wrote on the company blog. "We recognize that
this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our
offices in China."
Google has been reticent say much of anything in public. Only eight
days ago Google vice president and deputy general counsel Nicole Wong
told the Senate Judiciary committee no more than "We are still
weighing our options" during a hearing on internet freedom. Google's
.cn address, and possibly its other operations, could be shut down by
the Chinese government if the company declines to adhere to censorship
rules.
One insider has told wired.com that Google is willing to trade off
stricter limits on sexually explicit and gambling-related search
results for complete freedom for political topics. China has shown
equal aversion to all such topics.
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