Google CEO Eric Schmidt has given a vague assurance that the stand-off between his company and the Chinese government would be resolved soon, without giving specifics. From Reuters:
Google threatened in January to shut its Chinese Google.cn portal and to pull back from China, citing problems of censorship and a hacking attack from within the country.
“I’m going to use the word ‘soon’, which I will not define otherwise,” Schmidt told journalists at the Abu Dhabi Media Summit.
“There is no specific timetable. Something will happen soon,” he added, without elaborating.
Chinese officials have said they were working with Google to resolve the dispute.
Meanwhile, Google deputy general counsel Nicole Wong told a congressional committee that the copany remained committed to ending censorship of its Chinese search engine:
Nicole Wong, the firm’s vice president and deputy general counsel, told the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee that Google would stop censorship and “(if) the option is that we will shutter our .cn property and leave the country, we are prepared to do that.”
