Lie down with the dogs … ~ By Joseph Farah

Commentary from WorldNetDaily

By Joseph Farah Posted: January 14, 2010 ~ 1:00 am Eastern © 2010 There's an old axiom that says, "If you lie down with dogs, you wake up with fleas." Years ago, my good friends at Google decided to lie down with dogs anyway – despite my warnings. Like many corporate giants of the past, Google chose to get in bed with the totalitarian Chinese government – agreeing to censor search results to please its hosts in Beijing. It was strictly a business decision, Google explained. Executives even said it was a hand-wringing choice. But, as you know, the almighty dollar – or, in this case, the almighty yuan – can be very persuasive. But now, years later, Google is having second thoughts. It seems the world's largest search engine is threatening to pull out of China as a result of a sophisticated computer network attack that could only have been orchestrated by the government. Google officials said they have evidence that "a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human-rights activists. David Drummond, senior vice president and chief legal officer of Google, said the company is now reviewing the feasibility of its operations in China. The company has also concluded it is no longer willing to censor its search results in China's version of Google. Over the next few weeks officials plan to discuss with the government how it may 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," said Drummond. I hate to say I told you so, but Google could have spared itself all this grief by merely listening to me, since it had failed to heed its own corporate conscience. READ FULL STORY >