PORTLAND, Ore. — Unless you have been living under a rock, you know that Chinese cyber attacks on Google’s servers has prompted the search giant to threaten to close down its China operations unless Beijing backs off and allows the company to operate an unfiltered search engine.

Google claims that cyber attacks originating in China last month breached its (and 20 other company’s) corporate servers to read the e-mail of Chinese human rights advocates. According to a posting on Tuesday (Jan. 12) by on his blog, Google Chief Legal Officer David Drummond claimed the attacks originated in China, but only breached two accounts held by Chinese human rights advocates. Google also said it found that the e-mail accounts of dozens of U.S.-, China- and Europe-based human rights groups in China were being routinely breached by hackers who had obtained their passwords through phishing scams or malware.

Google’s threat to pull the plug on its Chinese operations is commendable, especially when compared to other service providers like Cisco Systems, which have been repeatedly criticized for providing the networking tools used by Chinese authorities to censor Internet content.

If you inspect Google’s declaration closely, however, you will find ample elbow room for remaining in the Chinese market, prompting me to predict that the issue will likely be settled through a high-level political compromises as part of ongoing U.S.-Chinese trade talks.

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via EETimes.com – Opinion: Google sets stage for political compromise on Chinese censorship.