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Foreign and Military Affairs

Microsoft, HP fail to back Google's China move: FT

(Agencies)
Updated: 2010-01-15 18:11

Google's threat to withdraw from China failed to win support from other top industry executives who said that their enthusiasm for the country was undimmed.

Google announced on Tuesday that it would no longer filter search results in China and said it may be forced to pull out of the world's largest online market of 360 million users.

However, Steve Ballmer, chief executive officer of Microsoft, described the affair as "the Google problem" and said: "Every large institution is being hacked. I don't think it's a fundamental change in the security environment on the internet."

He refused to comment on whether Microsoft would now stop censoring results on its Bing search service in China, but said that the software company saw a big business opportunity in China.

Mark Hurd, CEO of Hewlett-Packard, described China as "an amazing market with tremendous growth". Strong demand from Chinese customers was one of the main supports for the US tech industry last year.

Both executives also played down any wider threat to internet security from what Google had described as a "highly sophisticated and targeted attack" that had been aimed at more than 20 other companies. "I'd hate to run off on this one example and say it's a threat to the evolution of the IT industry," Mr Hurd said.

China's Foreign Ministry spokesperson said Thursday that China's Internet is open and welcomes international companies.