Google, China in Internet scuffle.

• Position: INFO TECHNOLOGY

Google may leave China, the biggest Internet market in the world, after a December cyber attack on its network that resulted in theft of its intellectual property.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The search engine giant said it would stop filtering content on its Chinese language Google.cn engine as required by the Chinese government and would try to negotiate a legal unfiltered search engine. If not, Google may leave the market, Reuters.com reported. The Chinese government told its local media that all foreign companies, including Google, must follow Chinese laws that require Internet firms to filter content.

China has about 384 million Internet users, media reports said, and they are mostly restricted from viewing online information the government deems incendiary or threatening, including the June 4, 1989, Tiananmen incident. In China, search requests that include words like "Tiananmen Square massacre" or "Dalai Lama" come up blank.

In recent months, The New York Times said, the government has also blocked Google's YouTube service. Last summer, the government briefly blocked access nationwide to Google's main search engine and other services like Gmail. It also forced the company to disable a function that lets the search engine suggest terms, arguing that it was trying to remove pornography from Google's search engine results.

The U.S. government has expressed its support for Google and sent a diplomatic note to China formally requesting an explanation for the attacks, according to Reuters.com. It has long been concerned about Beijing's cyber-spying...