Google hack raises serious concerns, US says

A coordinated hacking campaign targeting Google, Adobe Systems, and more than 30 other companies raises serious concerns, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Tuesday.

Sec Clinton said that the U.S. government is taking the attack -- which Google said came from China -- very seriously. "We have been briefed by Google on these allegations, which raise very serious concerns and questions," she said. "We look to the Chinese government for an explanation." While attacks of this nature have hit the military, federal agencies, and government contractors in the past, Google is the first technology company to come forward and acknowledge it has been hit. Google apparently feels strongly that China is behind the attack because the company said Tuesday that the event helped convince the company that it "should review the feasibility of our business operations in China."

"China may throw Google out, and it will undoubtedly block Google.cn," said Danny O'Brien, an international coordinator at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group. There is also a concern that all Google services could be blocked in China if the company violates Chinese regulations by stopping its censorship of search results, said Shaun Rein, managing director of China Market Research Group in Shanghai. Offerings like Gmail, Google Docs, and Google hosting for businesses all have users in China and could be affected by a move to block the search giant's services. Chinese government censors constantly patrol the Internet for content deemed undesirable, including pornography and discussion of sensitive topics like corruption. They also block access across the country to popular U.S. Web sites including YouTube, Twitter and Facebook. Google is just one of a group of search engines including Microsoft's Bing and Yahoo China that remove certain results from their search engines targeted at the country.