China's ominous Google ultimatum

China issues a dark warning to Google after accusations that Chinese hackers tried to crack U.S. government Gmail accounts. Should Google be worried?

Google's offices in Beijing: Google and China's tumultuous relationship is once again being rattled, after the tech giant accused Chinese hackers of trying to break into Gmail accounts.
(Image credit: Xing Guangli/Xinhua Press/Corbis)

Last week, Google accused Chinese hackers of trying to break into the Gmail accounts of top U.S. government officials, Chinese human rights activists, and journalists, among others. On Monday, China hit back hard, with a front page editorial in the official People's Daily newspaper warning that Google should be wary of "playing the role of a tool for political contention," because "when the international winds shift direction, it may become sacrificed to politics and will be spurned by the marketplace." Should Google take this threat seriously? (Watch a report about the ongoing battle.)

This will hurt Google's business: "Google has had a rocky relationship with China since January 2010," when it got in a fight over Chinese censorship, says Sean Ludwig in VentureBeat. But this new salvo puts Google in an even more "precarious position." Despite the "back-and-forth bickering," Google would still "surely like to have a hand in China's quickly growing market." Clearly, those lucrative opportunities are at risk.

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