Google is taking a strong stand against censorship. I’m glad that a large company is finally willing to cease operations in China if they are not able to legally run their business the way they’d like to.

Google senior vice president David Drummond:

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. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.

He also reveals that there was a large-scale attack that attempted to gain access to Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights advocates. Drummond doesn’t come right out and say it but implies that the attack was the work of the Chinese government.

I hope that other search engines and web companies decide to follow Google’s lead.