Google is considering shutting down its China operations after finding "a highly sophisticated and targeted attack" on its corporate infrastructure that originated from the country.

The attack, which also affected about 20 other companies, appears to have been aimed at accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists, the company said in its corporate blog.

"These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered--combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web--have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China," said Google's chief legal officer David Drummond.

As a result of the attacks, Google said it may decide to pull out of China altogether after it has discussions with the Chinese government. It started its Google.cn operations in 2006 and said at the time it could monitor the conditions in China. If new laws or other restrictions on Google surfaced, the company said it would "not hesitate to reconsider our approach to China.

"We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all," Drummond said. "We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China."

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton asked for an explanation from China in a statement issued on Tuesday.

Wednesday morning, Google's stock dropped in morning trading while Baidu, a rival Chinese search engine, saw its stock jump.

Google has hired the head of communications for Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) 2008 presidential campaign to lead its corporate communications .

Jill Hazelbaker will work from the search engine’s Mountain View, Calif., headquarters, the company said.

Hazelbaker most recently worked on New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's reelection campaign and has been called a Republican "Press Pro."

She received some negative attention from the press when she was accused of astroturfing in 2006.

While serving as press secretary for Tom Kean Jr.'s campaign for Senate in New Jersey, she was accused of using a pseudonym to post negative comments about incumbent Democrat Robert Menendez. The IP address used to post those comments was traced back to Kean's campaign office, and the New York Times reported at the time that the same IP address had also been used to send emails signed by Hazelbaker.

An IP address is like a telephone number and is usually specific to individual computers. Hazelbaker and Kean both denied her involvement with the alleged astro-turfing, and Hazelbaker called the accusations "nonsense." Kean was ultimately defeated.

Hazelbaker has plenty of ties in Washington-- good news for a company that increasingly finds itself under the watchful eye of lawmakers. A native of Oregon, Hazelbaker worked on Sen. Gordon Smith's 2002 reelection campaign. Gordon is now head of the National Association of Broadcasters.

Google News is no longer hosting new articles from the Associated Press.

"At the moment we're not adding new hosted content from the AP," a Google spokesman confirmed.

AP and Google have reportedly been hashing out a new licensing contract. Google News displays stories from all kinds of news outlets; some have licensing agreements and others don't. AP's disappearance from Google News is part of a broader shift in the publishing industry, which is trying to figure out its relationships with search engines in light of struggles to make ends meet with online advertising revenue.

In December, Google announced a policy that lets news publishers limit the amount of subscription content Google can access for free.

This development goes counter to my previous post about a proposed UK law that would allow search engines to have unfettered access to all copyrighted material.

The online advertising industry's top lobbyist blasted Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va.) for "misunderstanding" how interactive media work, saying his proposed bill to protect consumers' online privacy is horribly misguided.

Interactive Advertising Bureau president and CEO Randall Rothenberg said in an op-ed that such a bill will stunt the growth of the online media market and put 3.1 million jobs at risk.

"Advertising is the engine of the consumer economy, and fundamentally the only way American shoppers can compare prices, discover products, and learn about new stores and sales in their neighborhood – and the sole way businesses can get this information to them," Rothenberg wrote. "Yet the Congressman wants to legislate its elimination."

Last week, in our special section on technology, Boucher wrote that websites should not share consumer information with third-parties without their consent and and consumers should be able to opt out of having information collected in the first place.

Boucher, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet, is supposedly working on this bill with the subcommittee's top Republican, Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.). In the same special section, however, Stearns wrote that the government should keep its hands off the Internet.

"I wish he'd tell that to Rep. Rick Boucher," Rothenberg said.  

A proposed amendment to a UK bill would give Google and other search engines immunity from copyright claims, basically giving Google permission to copy anything it pleases.

The Guardian of London reports a conservative member of Parliament is proposing a new clause to the Digital Economy Bill that requires any publicly accessible website to "give a standing and non-exclusive license to providers of search engine services to make a copy of some or all of the content of that website."

The amendment would rewrite UK copyright law and would have dramatic impact on how other countries allow Google to treat copyrighted material.

This is a huge deal for newspaper publishers, who would be considered in violation of the law if they block search engine crawlers from accessing their sites.

The broad Digital Economy Bill would also make Internet service providers warn subscribers accused of illegal downloading before interfering with their bandwidth or kicking them offline altogether. The bill is currently making its way through House of Lords committees.

Comcast CEO Brian Roberts had a private meeting with FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski last Friday in Las Vegas to talk about net neutrality and the national broadband plan according to agency records.

It may have been an awkward conversation, as Friday was an embarrassing day for the FCC on both counts.

On Friday, the FCC had a very rough day in a D.C. courtroom as judges pointedly questioned the agency's authority to censure Comcast for interfering with Internet traffic back in 2008. The arguments from the U.S. Court of Appeals could throw a wrench in the FCC's plans to enact net neutrality regulations, especially if the court ultimately finds doing so oversteps the agency's jurisdiction. That would be a giant set-back for the Obama administration, for which net neutrality is a key priority.

Nonetheless, the FCC is going forward with its examination of net neutrality rules. Comments are due to the agency Thursday. Comcast and other Internet service providers, including AT&T, have vehemently fought against such regulations of the Internet. Comcast says the FCC didn't jump through the necessary administrative hoops when it issued an order against the company two years ago. Comcast's top governmental affairs executive David Cohen said in a blog post that it supports the FCC's current process to "bring some clarity to this unsettled area."

Genachowski on Friday was fielding questions about a one-month delay in turning in the National Broadband Plan to Congress. News broke late Thursday night that the FCC needs more time and asked for an extension, drawing criticism that the FCC should have spent more time on the plan rather than kicking off controversial net neutrality rules.

LAS VEGAS--Following FCC Chief Julius Genachowski around the massive CES show floor over the weekend revealed a little more insight about what makes the top communications regulator tick.

First of all, he wanted to see everything. If it weren't for his intrepid tour guide, FCC press secretary Jen Howard, who kept things moving at a quick pace, he could have spent an hour at every booth.

The second thing that struck me was Genachowski's ability to envision real-world applications for otherwise over-hyped technologies.

At our first stop at Powermat, (at left) a company that makes wireless charging stations that refuel your devices by placing them on a flat mat rather than plugging in each individually, Genachowski wanted to know more about the energy savings it could provide.

At the Intel booth, he played around with a giant touch-screen that called up social media accounts and other visuals by dragging your finger. He examined the tiny microprocessor that makes it work.

The company isn't commercializing the giant touch-screen--it was just for show. So I asked Genachowski what he thought a practical application could be. I have to admit, other than the neat visuals, I didn't see much use for it.

"You can imagine an entertainment system that uses that kind of visual for its navigation," he said. "Instead of a scrolling menu with words, it could show you the front of a DVD cover... Or say you wanted to pull up family photos. Would you want to see thumbnails, or great graphics like that?"

A former executive at IAC, Barry Diller's entertainment and media company, it was his job to predict the "next big thing" in how media was distributed and how consumers wanted to interact with it.

His next big challenge is finding new ways to compel consumers to interact with broadband to reinforce the Obama administration's goal of Internet access for all Americans.

A short video of his tour is coming soon.

--Good government groups (Common Cause, US Pirg, Democracy 21 and League of Women Voters) give the Obama Administration good grades on transparency and ethics, compared to other administrations. Last week, another report gave the POTUS much lower marks when it comes to transparency.

--The White House is having a series of web chats this week, with the first one featuring Energy Czar Carol Browner just finishing up today. On Thursday, federal CTO Aneesh Chopra and Norm Eisen, special counsel to the president for ethics and government reform, will talk about how the Obama administration has "changed Washington."

--Arts & Labs, an entertainment coalition that counts Viacom, Cisco and NBC Universal among its members, announced Andrew Keen has come on board as an advisor. Keen is author of Cult of the Amateur: How the Internet is Killing Our Culture. Arts & Labs is co-chaired by Republican veteran Mark McKinnon.

Major IT and telecom companies are joining forces with academics to try to make communications networks 1,000 times more efficient, my colleague Ben Geman reports.

According to the Department of Energy, information technology and telecommunications facilities account for three percent of all U.S. power use.