Google may be dropping their “google.cn” in China altogether, citing frustrations with restrictive Chinese laws regarding content.

Story from AP (Courtesy of Yahoo! News):

BEIJING – China tried Friday to keep its censorship row with Google from damaging business confidence or ties with Washington, promising good conditions for foreign investors but giving no sign it might relax Internet controls…

If a compromise isn’t worked out within the next few weeks, the company intends to shut down Google.cn and pull out of China. Rubin said Google hasn’t set a deadline for breaking the impasse…

Images from the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown on pro-democracy protests cropped up in Google.cn’s search results Thursday, leading some Web surfers to conclude Google had begun to defy censorship rules. But Rubin said Google.cn is still censoring its results to comply with China’s law and protect its employees there.

As is well known, China has a strict set of censorship rules for all content within its borders.  One example of this is obviously… porn.  Just last year alone, over 5,000 people were arrested by Chinese authorities for pornography-related offenses.  While Americans certainly love their porn, turning it into a multi-billion dollar industry, it could be argued that porn itself could be done without.  At the very least, if a country had a moral opposition to porn, American businesses could learn to operate within China on those terms.  It’s not like porn-related concerns are really going to interfere with other ventures, right?

In 2008 “The Dark Knight” became an astronomical success, heightened by a cunning performance from Heath Ledger before his death.  Currently the film has a domestic gross of over half a billion dollars.  Think of the business opportunity available in China, the world’s largest population.  Now remember that opportunity was stanched before ever getting the chance to flourish.

Quoted From CBC News (full article here):

It did not elaborate on what it meant by “cultural sensitivities,” but the New York Times speculated that the Hollywood studio may have been concerned Chinese censors would be offended by scenes shot in Hong Kong, including those in which Batman, played by Christian Bale, nabs a Chinese money launderer.

Another potential point of conflict, it noted, was a brief appearance by Edison Chen, the Hong Kong singer and record producer who appeared in sexually explicit photographs posted on the internet in 2008.

“Memoirs of a Geisha” and “Brokeback Mountain” were also banned citing similar reasons.  So it’s clear that huge opportunities for both creative expression and financial prosperity are losing their legs in China for the sake of hoarding information.  As a result, Google has grown tired of China’s restrictions, and has threatened to drop “google.cn” from its operations and pull out of China entirely.  Keep in mind Google is a company that believes information should be free, and information should be freely accessible, so it’s not entirely unrealistic to see Google do this.

Exacerbating the problem is the fact Google believes they, as well as other U.S. companies were attacked by Chinese hackers.  Specifically, human rights activists were targeted.

From Official Google Blog: (full story here)

…we have evidence to suggest that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. Based on our investigation to date we believe their attack did not achieve that objective. Only two Gmail accounts appear to have been accessed, and that activity was limited to account information (such as the date the account was created) and subject line, rather than the content of emails themselves.

I agree with Google’s take on this, as most Americans probably would.  It is time for American companies to show China that when it comes to free information, there are firm rules.  Either all of it goes, or none of it.  Right now Google is one of the few companies with the international fame and domestic success to both embarrass China with its withdrawal while thriving economically.  More power to them, and hopefully other companies follow suit until China changes the way it handles or hides information.