Search engine giant Google has pledged to discontinue its operations in China, unless it can reach an agreement with the Chinese government whereby the company will no longer have to sensor certain search results returned by the Chinese version of the world-famous search engine.

In a post on the company's official blog, its Chief Legal Officer David Drummond wrote that the decision to reexamine its presence in the country was caused by the Chinese government's attempts to sensor Web content beyond Google's existing agreement to voluntarily sensor results of searches that may lead to bad publicity for the state.

Drummond also said that in December, the company's corporate infrastructure was subjected to a major cyber attack that originated in China and seemed to have been aiming for access go Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. During an investigation of the attack, Google discovered that at least 20 other large companies had been attacked in a similar fashion and with seemingly similar aims.

\"Based on our investigation to date we believe their attack did not achieve that objective,\" Drummond Wrote. \"Only two Gmail accounts appear to have been accessed and that activity was limited to account information (such as the date the account was created) and subject line, rather than the content of emails themselves.\"

Investigation also discovered that dozens of Gmail accounts of advocates for human rights in China based in US, Europe and China itself had been \"routinely accessed by third parties.\" Unwarranted access in these instances, however, was not caused by a security breach in Google's own infrastructure, Drummond added, loosely attributing the events to phishing scams and malware on users' computers.

The company launched Google.cn in January 2006. At the time, Google believed that \"the benefits of increased access to information for people in China and a more open Internet outweighed our discomfort in agreeing to censor some results.\"

The attacks, along with the government's attempts to stifle free speech on the Internet made over the past year have lead Google to \"review the feasibility of our business operations in China.\"

Drummond said Google was no longer willing to censor search results on Google.cn and would hold discussions with the Chinese government over the next several weeks to find a legal way to operate an \"unfiltered search engine.\"

\"We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.\"