Those Chinese hackers are rather sophisticated indeed. When blogger Noel Hidalgo went to China and was picked up & deported for filming a protest with his cell phone. He noticed that someone had also hacked his Facebook and Twitter accounts. Now Google is saying they’ve finally had enough? No more bending to the will of the Great Fire Wall of China?

Google said it had evidence to suggest that “a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts” of Chinese human rights activists. The attack was discovered in December.

Based on its investigation to date, Google said it does not believe the cyber attack succeeded. “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,” the companysaid in a blog posting.

But David Drummond, Google senior vice president and chief legal officer, added that the attacks “have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China.”

For the moment it would appear that Google is saber rattling. But even if they are it will be interesting to see how China responds.

From the NY Times:

“Every American I’ve talked to says: ‘Dude, it’s ridiculous that we’re not doing everything we can to keep you in the country. We need people like you!’ ” he said.

“The people of America get it,” he added. “And in a matter of time, I think current lawmakers are going to realize how dumb they’re being.”

Immigrants like Mr. Mavinkurve are the lifeblood of Google and Silicon Valley, where half the engineers were born overseas, up from 10 percent in 1970. Google and other big companies say the Chinese, Indian, Russian and other immigrant technologists have transformed the industry, creating wealth and jobs.

I have nothing against immigrants since my parents were immigrants themselves. I also admire Mr. Mavinkurve for the drive that has gotten him to where he is now. It is quite amazing that he was there at the inception of Facebook and played a major role in some of Google’s product releases. But the question I have to ask is why are we not focusing on educating the American workforce? We make a college education here so unaffordable. We end up saddling college students with thousands of dollars of debt in the form of student loans. If you ever have a chance to read Strapped by Tamara Draut you’ll see what it’s like for twenty-and-thirty somethings in the age we are in. I’m part of the strapped generation make no mistake about it, but my own personal circumstance is best left for another blog post.

There’s no reason why the programmers, designers and engineers the country so desperately needs, not only for web & IT related fields, but for the new Green Economy can’t come from within our borders. We have hundreds of thousands of young people who can’t get into college or complete or further their education because of debt. Got Tuition? Many of us need it.

All in all, immigration is a good thing for America. The problem is that corporations are looking to bring people in from out of the country first not last. The have some reasons for doing this, obviously our education system has major problems as I’ve already mentioned.

Lastly, I wanted to mention that there is also another issue concerning corporations and the visas they seek. Not all of them are like Google wanting to bring people into the country. There have been occurrences of corporations abusing H1-b visas and even worse the workers who come in under H2-b visas. Regarding the H1-b visas their abuse usually has to do with corporations using the visas to outsource American jobs.

Trustbusters divided on next move on Google

That’s the question facing lawyers from the U.S. Department of Justice investigating Google. Sources who have provided testimony to the government say a departmental debate revolves around whether antitrust regulators should challenge Google’s proposed revenue-sharing deal with Yahoo, or go for the whole enchilada–and haul Google into court on broader charges related to its dominance in search advertising.

While I feel that the government needs to disallow the merger of Yahoo! and Google over search word advertising. I don’t think you want to go too far and challenge Google’s dominance in search advertising by itself. As long as there is a fair and just open market for competition, you have to let Google be the dominant search advertising corporation. If Yahoo! or some other search company were more popular then they’d be the dominant ones pulling in search advertising revenue. And as long as fair competition is allowed that could be a hypothetical reality.

There’s a difference between success and a monopoly. Microsoft was a success with Windows but it still faces competition from Linux and Apple’s operating systems—even though Windows—like Google—is the dominant player in it’s field. Hypothetically one day Ubuntu or Leopard could be the leader. Microsoft was monopoly-like when they tried to force everyone to use Internet Explorer because it was tied in with their OS.

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I think it’s great that Google is creating so called “net neutrality” tools to monitor ISP’s who are doing wrong.

In response, the Federal Communications Commission announced it would investigate the charges, and in May, a bill was re-introduced into Congress that would rewrite U.S. antitrust law to prohibit network operators like AT&T and Comcast from blocking, impairing, or discriminating against “lawful” Internet content, applications, and services or charging extra fees for “prioritization or enhanced quality of service.”