Update. Irony of the Day:

Excerpt: As daylight faded, two 18-year-old law students approached with a bottle of rice liquor and lit two candles. One of the students said that she wanted to make a public gesture of support for Google, which steadily has lost market share to Baidu, a Chinese-run company that has close ties with the government.

“The government should give people the right to see what they want online,” said the woman, Bing, who withheld her full name for fear that it might cause her problems at school. “The government can’t always tell lies to the people.”

Google vs. China

In defense of Chinese Human Rights Activists

Google threatens to Shut Down google.cn

…“For Google to pull up stakes and basically pull out China, the attack must have been large in scope and very penetrating,” Mr. Mulvenon said…

Mr. Drummond said that Google decided to speak publicly about the attack not only because of its security and human rights implications, but because “this information goes to the heart of a much bigger global debate about freedom of speech.”

Google entered the China market in 2006, agreeing to introduce a censored search engine…

When your company motto is don’t be evil, you really, really, really shouldn’t be evil. So while we sit back and shoot spitballs at Google (and Bing, and Yahoo, and now Apple) for colluding with our Commie Brethren across the sea in censoring Chinese human rights activists on the web, and the Dalai Lama, and even elephantjournal.com to some extent, we have to then give ’em props when they take a stand.

Well, today, they did.

Excerpt, NYTimes:

Breaking News Alert
The New York Times
Tue, January 12, 2010 — 6:11 PM ET
—–

Google Threatens Pullout From China After E-Mail Accounts Are Hacked

Google threatened to end its operations in China after it
discovered that the e-mail accounts of human rights activists
had been breached.

The company said it had detected a “highly sophisticated and
targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating
from China.” Google says further investigation revealed that
“a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail
accounts of Chinese human rights activists.” Google did not
specifically accuse the Chinese government. But the company
added that it is “no longer willing to continue censoring our
results” on its Chinese search engine, as the government
requires. Google says the decision could force it to shut
down its Chinese site and its offices in the country.

Read More:
http://www.nytimes.com?emc=na

Great movie, worth the rent: