Government and Policy

Google's accusations hurt trust on Internet

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2011-06-02 19:31

BEIJING - Again, Google complained about China undermining its cyberspace service. Just as its previous accusations, the world's largest Internet search engine provided no solid proof to support its statement.

In a blog post updated on Wednesday, Google said a clandestine campaign originating in China targeted some users of Gmail, its e-mail service, aiming at stealing passwords and monitoring e-mail accounts.

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It was the second time that Google arbitrarily pointed its finger at China. Last year, Google groundlessly accused the Chinese government of supporting hacker attack against it and pushed China to abandon legal regulations on the Internet by threatening to withdraw from the Chinese market.

The chimerical complaints by Google have become obstacles for enhancing global trust between stakeholders in cyberspace.

Nobody would doubt Google's leading role on the Internet. Founded in 1998, Google runs more than 1 million web servers in data centers around the world, and processes more than 1 billion online search requests.

However, it was too imprudent for the online giant to lash out at others without solid proof to support its accusation.

Last year, Google invited the US National Security Agency (NSA), a spy agency, to help with its inquiry into cyberattacks against it, even though the cooperation was considered to be a serious threat to Internet neutrality.

Then unidentified American security investigators said, they traced the attackers to computers at Chinese Shanghai Jiaotong University and Lanxiang Vocational School, according to the New York Times.

The report amused many Chinese at that time since Lanxiang Vocational School enjoys a good fame at training chefs for local restaurants.

But the American investigators suggested that the school had the capacity to stage the cyber attacks and made the world's No. 1 search engine suffer. It is really hard for people with common sense to understand.

Furthermore, it is not appropriate for Google, a profit-first business, to act as an Internet judge.

Google has not always followed business ethics as it says. The American media reported in mid-May that Google had not been vigilant about policing online pharmaceutical advertisements because they are so lucrative. As a result, the Internet search leader distributed online advertisements from illegal pharmacies.

In fact, individual criminals, rather than states, are the major treat to Internet safety, as some US experts say.

China, the United States and many other countries are all victims of hackers. In China, for instance, about 60 percent of the Internet users experienced hacker attacks during the first half of 2010. More than 30 percent of China's netizens had their online accounts or passwords stolen.

Global cooperation is urgently needed to keep the Internet safe.

It is a real pity that Google's baseless complaints have distress mutual trust and the efforts to establish new global governance in cyberspace, letting real online criminals obtain illegal profits without being punished.