Google has said it is willing to withdraw from the Chinese market after announcing it would no longer censor its search service in the territory.

The "we're lovely we are" Google brand has taken a bit of a knock ever since the search giant opened office in China in 2006, principally because of its compliance with various kinds of government censorship in the country.

Google chiefs argued that such compliance didn't completely conflict with their more general corporate commitment to free speech on the internet, because the growth of the web in general in China, and Google-style services in particular, was spearheading a move towards more freedom of expression in the country, even if said moves were rather nominal by Western standards.

But the search giant said last night, in something of a surprise statement, that they would stop censoring their Chinese website, and would therefore start linking to websites the Chinese government would rather its people didn't see. The company says it has changed its policy towards China as a result of a cyber attack against its servers originating in the country, seemingly designed to hack into the webmail accounts of human rights activists.

Although they don't specifically accuse the Chinese government of involvement in the attack – which they claim affected other big US web firms too – they say the incident has persuaded them they that shouldn't be playing ball with China's internet authorities in order to secure a share of the country's already significant and growing rapidly web market.

Talks are now expected to begin between Chinese officials and Google bosses regarding the service's future in the country. Few believe the Chinese will tolerate a censorship-free search service on the country's internet, but Google seem quite happy to leave the market if they have to.

While Google has enjoyed quite a bit of success in China, it is by no means the dominant search player there like it is in the US and Europe. Home grown Baidu is the biggest search engine in the Chinese market, while Yahoo! also enjoys higher market penetration in the region than it does over here.