google's failure in china is a collective failure. the chinese staff are educated people and obviously knew the whole thing would be a risk for them. it's not as if they were brainwashed into working for google. since their collective efforts have failed they will have to reap the consequences collectively. not that i have no sympathy for them but the same goes for anyone, anywhere, who decides to work for somebody else's business.

if the directors of google had deemed the hurdles to be just "a few," as you state, they would likely be staying. the fact that they are leaving strongly suggests that they have assessed the hurdles to be more than "a few," and not likely to be overcome.

as for the chinese staff's future prospects, well considering they have the skills to work for somebody like google and in china's ever-expanding economy it should not be impossible to find a decent job, even with all the stigma they may receive.

they'll probably fare better than most of the people in this little dying city in the states in which I live where unemployment is 15%.

Google is a search engine. It is not NATO. It is not Amnesty International. I think the opposing argument for this point contains the cultural arrogance that permeates the discussion of Google and China. How would you react if a Chinese search engine was campaigning in America to stop the abuses to civilians in Iraq for example? The 'fight for freedom of speech' is not a black and white picture. It is coloured by politics. With this in mind, Google should leave China to protect its intellectual property. Google is not a political entity and should not be misconstrued as one.