Google announced on Tuesday that it may pull out of China altogether after Chinese hackers launched an attack on its systems. Although the search engine giant did not directly implicate the Chinese government, the company also said it was no longer willing to comply governmental censorship regulations, the BBC reported this morning.

Google says no more to self-censorship in China. Source: Raul Ochoa

According to a statement on the official Google blog, the company detected a “highly sophisticated and targeted attack”, emanating from China, on company infrastructure, resulting in the theft of some intellectual property. In addition, the company found the hackers had attempted assaults on at least 20 other large companies; more significant, however, the company determines that the GoogleMail accounts of several human rights activists around the world were also hacked.

Google said that these attempts, combined with “the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web”, have lead the company to reconsider its business operations in China.

The response from China so far has been vague. Chinese officials were “seeking more information on Google’s statement that it could quit China,” the official Xinhua news agency reported Wednesday afternoon, citing an unnamed official from China’s State Council Information Office. The Wall Street Journal reported that the story has been largely downplayed by Chinese media and, unsurprisingly, that Google’s official statement on the move, which had been translated and posted on several sites, was soon taken down.

ABC reported that Google’s threat to pull out of China over censorship is a rare display of defiance in a system where foreign companies have long accepted intrusive controls to gain access to a huge and growing market.

Charles Aurther, technology editor for The Guardian, says that while this is certainly a bold move by Google, their launch of a cyberspace war with information as their main weapon will not put an end to Chinese censorship. The reality is that Google, which launched Google.cn in 2006, is only a minority player there, holding only about 12 percent of the search market, compared to its Chinese rival, Baidu.com, which holds a staggering 77 percent.

According to The Guardian, the blogsphere has been abuzz with chatter about the recent announcement. The vast majority either supported Google’s decision to challenge the censors or expressed regret at the possible loss of a respected search engine, but there was also criticism of the US firm’s business tactics.

The mood was similar on Twitter, which is available in China only to those who are willing and able to get around the Great Fire Wall. Google was widely applauded, though there was some cynicism about its business motives.

Faced with a conflict between one of America’s most powerful companies and the Chinese government, US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton urged China to come forward with an explanation highlighting the importance of being able to operate on the web “with confidence” to modern society and economy, reported The Guardian. Google and the Chinese government will be in talks over the coming weeks to determine a final outcome, the BBC reported.