EricEwe.com

With the recent development of Chinese nationals hacking Gmail – Google’s Free Email service, this lead the world’s largest search engine to rethink their strategy plus take swift action by enabling HTTPS for all Gmail users.

The hackers targeted Chinese human rights activists where these Gmail users believe that their Gmail accounts were compromised by the Chinese authorities. A law professor and human rights lawyer in Beijing, Dr. Biao stated that “At the end of last year, I received an email invitation to a human rights conference in Ireland. Two weeks later, our university officials came to me and said that the heads of the university had heard I planned to visit Ireland and that it was better not to go.” He elaborated “How did you know that? I have not told anyone” and was told: “Who do you think we are?”.

The hacking of GMail also put a strained on Google’s relationship with China as Google worked hard to tap into the Chinese market over 1.3 billion people and internet users of 384 million, according to Reuters on Jan 15, 2010. Revenue for Google in Q1 to Q3 for 2009 amounts to $16.9 billion and China’s est. revenue for 2009 is only $600 million, Google sees a huge growth potential in the country due to the sheer size of internet users and also the rise in disposable income for the Chinese middle class.

I do not think that the world’s 900 lbs search gorilla which is still trailing Baidu, China’s #1 search engine will leave the land of opportunities.

Do you?