Google says it is prepared to leave China if censoring continues

Washington, Mar.11 (ANI): Search engine Google has said that it is not prepared for further censorship at the hand of the Chinese Government, and is ready to leave the country if pushed further.

"We are no longer willing to censor our search results in China, and we are currently reviewing our options," the China Daily quoted Google vice president and deputy general counsel Nicole Wong, as saying in her testimony before the US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee.

"If the option is that we'll shutter our .cn operation and leave the country, we are prepared to do that," Wong added.

Wong added that the company would do it in an "appropriate and responsible way," that it has "hundreds of employees on the ground" and understands "the seriousness or the sensitivity" of its decision but "we will stop censoring" search results in China.

At the congressional hearing on "The Google Predicament: Transforming US Cyberspace Policy to Advance Democracy, Security and Trade," the Google executive said they had found out those attacks came from China but they were not going to say "who is carrying out these attacks" and they would hope the Chinese government would work with the US officials to investigate the issue.

Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said Wednesday at a media conference in Abu Dhabi that the discussion with China will yield results soon.