This morning, Google's U.S. corporate site , according to a report in the U.K.'s Guardian. No clue whether this was China's doing or just somebody's idea of a joke (I'm guessing the latter).

I'm wracking my brain trying to come up with another example of a major U.S. corporation saying "bite me" to a major national power because it didn't like that government's repressive policies. If the government is pro capitalism, U.S. companies generally do not appear to care how they treat their citizens. Am I wrong about this?

Of course, it's not clear that Google really cares either -- because this all came about after inside China. To my admittedly warped mind, it still smacks more of revenge than anything principled.

James Fallows of the Atlantic Wire had , in which he states:

The initial premise, that it all started from a hacking episode, is not quite right. We did have a hacking incident. Most hacking incidents that you see are freelancers -- maybe government sponsored, maybe not. ... This attack, which was from China, was different. It was almost singularly focused on getting into Gmail accounts specifically of human rights activists, inside China or outside....There were political aspects to these hacking attacks that were quite unusual.