:( :( :(

I will cry if this happens…

Per CNN,

Google said Tuesday the company and at least 20 others were victims of a “highly sophisticated and targeted attack” originating in China in mid-December, evidently to gain access to the e-mail accounts of Chinese human rights activists.

“Based on our investigation to date we believe their attack did not achieve that objective,” according to a statement by David Drummond, senior vice president of corporate development and chief legal officer for Google, operator of the most popular Internet search engine.

Drummond said that as a result of the attacks, Google has decided it is no longer willing to consider censorship of its Google site in China and may have to shut down its site and its offices in that nation.

Read more about Google v. PRC here.

I mean, within the 2years I’ve been out here,  they’ve permanently forbidden utube, blogs, twitter (Spring ‘09) and FB (Summer ‘09). Apparently the PRC had shut down the google site for one day in August ‘09 (when I wasn’t here) for some other censorship blah blah blah issue…. so there is a possibility in this happening… esp since the PRC only generates 2% of G’s revenue; G is only used by 20% of population here… with Baidu.com being their #1 search engine. LE SIGHHHHHHHHHHH.

This will suck for many expats for sure!! Email and all…. I mean, why can’t we all just get along?!!? So I guess I better open up another account elsewhere and initialize the forwarding feature for contingency. I feel like I’m cheating on my gmail account … :-(

Feel free to shout out some alternate account recommendations that will match gmail’s features … :-(

(On the flip side…. as per my friend Eric said to me today… “but think of the stories you can tell…when I was in the ‘Hai, I had to _____________  to use email!”…. Umm, thanks E, but I’m pretty certain this can be a story I can do without, bc mi corazon is with the G 4 eva! :( )

. . don’t burn the day. .