Google’s Unfounded Accusations against China Undermine Global Confidence in the Internet

Google has once again accused China of trying to undermine its services in cyberspace. Similar to past accusations, the world’s top search engine did not present any solid evidence to support its assertion.

In a blog post published Wednesday, Google indicated that a clandestine campaign of Chinese origin attacked some users of Gmail, its email system, in order to steal passwords and spy on email accounts. This is the second time that Google has arbitrarily accused China.

Last year, Google baselessly accused the Chinese government of supporting an attack by “hackers” against the search engine. It also pressured the Asian country to abandon its legal regulations on the Internet by threatening to withdraw from the Chinese market. Google’s unfounded charges have turned into obstacles to the rise of global confidence between people who participate in cyberspace.

It is impossible to deny the leadership role that Google plays on the Internet. The company was founded in 1998 and now has more than one million employees online in information centers around the world. Furthermore, it processes more than one billion searches online each day.

Nevertheless, it was reckless to attack other parties without providing solid proof in support of its accusations. Last year, Google invited the National Security Agency (NSA), a U.S. spy agency, to contribute in its investigation of cyber attacks against the search engine, despite the fact that such cooperation was considered a serious threat to the neutrality of the Internet.

Later, unidentified American security investigators revealed that they followed the trail of the “hackers” to computers at the Chinese University of Jiaotong, in Shanghai, and the Lanxiang Vocational School, according to The New York Times.

At the time, the report was seen as comical by a large number of Chinese, since the Lanxiang Vocational School enjoys a good reputation for training chefs for local restaurants. Regardless, it is not acceptable that Google should be the judge of the Internet in any event, since it is a business whose priority is its profits.

Google has not always been as ethical as the company tries to appear. The American media reported in May that Google was not careful when it placed pharmaceutical advertising online, which has become a highly profitable venture. As a result, the leading search engine ended up distributing illegal pharmaceutical advertisements.

In reality, it is the individual criminals, not states, who pose the greatest threat to the Internet, as has been established by various American experts. China and the United States are the two countries most victimized by “hackers.”

In China, for example, almost 60 percent of Internet users have suffered some “hacker” attack during the first half of 2010. Meanwhile, 30 percent of Chinese Internet users have had their online accounts or passwords stolen.

Urgent global cooperation is required to guarantee the Internet’s security. It is a shame that Google’s unfounded complaints damage mutual confidence and efforts to establish a new global governance for the Internet, which allows the real online criminals to obtain illicit profits without being punished.