Just recently, search giant Google and its web-based mail service Gmail were victims of a cyber attack that targeted the accounts of Chinese Human Rights activists.

David Drummond, the chief legal officer for Google responded to this incident with the statement provided below:

“These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered — have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China.”

With the above information in mind, Google’s blogs later stated that they are no longer going to censor search results on Google.cn. More information concerning their response is to this attack can be found on their blog post titled “A New Approach to China.”

A lot of talk about this controversy has started reaction from all over the world on Twitter, which can be seen below.

Since Google may quit China, this may severely affect how SEO is perceived and how many Chinese sites appear in SERPs all over the world.

Google is still attempting to further resolve this issue, as stated in the concluding paragraph of their blog post:

“The decision to review our business operations in China has been incredibly hard, and we know that it will have potentially far-reaching consequences. We want to make clear that this move was driven by our executives in the United States, without the knowledge or involvement of our employees in China who have worked incredibly hard to make Google.cn the success it is today. We are committed to working responsibly to resolve the very difficult issues raised.”

What is your standpoint on this incident? Is Google in the wrong, or should China’s search results be uncensored?