14 DAY TRIAL // Google has been poking the dragon, so to speak, lately, going against China, accusing it more or less directly of hacking its infrastructure and attacking the company as well as other US companies and even government sites. While Google hasn't gone all out accusing the Chinese government of attacks, it's come very close. And the Chinese government's patience is running thin.
In what can be described as a clear warning salvo, an editorial in the English edition of the Communist Party's biggest newspaper, People's Daily, accuses Google of being a tool of the US government and having a political agenda.
"Google's accusations aimed at China are spurious, have ulterior motives, and bear malign intentions," the newspaper said.
"Google should not become overly embroiled in international political struggle, playing the role of a tool for political contention," it added.
The strong response should raise some questions about Google's business future in China, which is what the article probably aimed to do.
The accusations come after the latest criticism from Google last week, when the company said it intercepted a number of attacks aimed at Gmail users, including Chinese political activists and US government officials.
They were the victims of a highly focused phishing attack aimed at getting access to their email accounts. In some cases, the attacks succeeded, in the sense that hackers were able to obtain the login credentials, but Google's security infrastructure was able to detect the attack and minimize damage.
"we recently uncovered a campaign to collect user passwords, likely through phishing. This campaign, which appears to originate from Jinan, China," Google said last week.
"The goal of this effort seems to have been to monitor the contents of these users’ emails, with the perpetrators apparently using stolen passwords to change peoples’ forwarding and delegation settings," it explained.
"Google detected and has disrupted this campaign to take users’ passwords and monitor their emails. We have notified victims and secured their accounts. In addition, we have notified relevant government authorities," it added.