Due to a new development, you may be able to either thank Google for getting China to censor less information, or blame the company for starting World War III.  The reason: the White House has sided with Google in the free speech and hacking conflict that cropped up this week.

When Google made its big announcement about an attack originating from China, the company also mentioned that "at least twenty other large companies" had been affected.  Now, it’s become almost certain that one of them was Adobe, and there are signs that Yahoo was another target.

Update:  Chinese government officials have responded to Google’s proposed actions. As reported by Bloomberg:

Reactions to Google’s announcement about a possible withdrawal from China have been mixed so far; there have been objections from individuals who think its absence will deprive the Chinese people of information, while others approve of what they consider a moral stand.  But Baidu’s investors probably aren’t too conflicted, as the company’s stock imitated a bottle rocket today.

Google released a stunning blog post that details a "sophisticated and targeted attack" on Gmail that "resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google".

Google notes that the attack was not just on Google infrastructure but also on more than twenty other companies from various industries. Google states that they are working with the authorities in the U.S. and will be notifying the companies of the breaches.

Google is used to coming under fire from different groups when it comes to its Google Books project. Most recently, the fire has come from the China Writers Association, which has over 8,000 members.

The group complained that Google was scanning and uploading its books without permission from authors. According to a Bloomberg report:

An investment group with significant ties to Hulu may now be ready to help a similar site launch in China.  A report’s connected Providence Equity Partners to both Baidu and a new online video destination.

As much time and money as Microsoft’s devoted to increasing its share of the U.S. search market, it looks like the corporation has another major target in its sights, as well.  Microsoft acknowledged this week that it intends to expend a lot of energy on China.

Microsoft has launched a new service in China, and although it’s based on Windows Live Messenger, comparisons to a site that’s popular elsewhere in the world have become inevitable.  MSN Juku, which is in beta, seems a little bit similar to Twitter.

All sorts of corporations and individuals have agreed that the mobile market is key in China; many more people can afford Internet-enabled phones than PCs.  Baidu may be onto something, then, as it intends to have an app loaded onto phones before they’re made available for sale.

Google’s music service in China hasn’t achieved much so far; no one should look for Google’s next quarterly financial report to say it’s brought in hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue or toppled Baidu.  But neither has it failed, and one person who’s close to the service recently indicated that it’s picking up steam.

Many products are initially available in English, and then branch out into languages like French, Italian, German, and Spanish.  (There’s even an acronym, FIGS.)  But Google Search by voice broke with tradition – and started to make its way into a huge market – by moving straight from English to Mandarin Chinese today.

Don’t be surprised if Google’s sites and services become inaccessible to people within China.  The search giant has gotten in trouble with a newspaper called the People’s Daily, and said publication just happens to be the official newspaper of the Communist Party of China.

Baidu shared its third quarter earnings report last night, and the part that actually concerned the third quarter was quite positive – the Chinese search giant reported higher revenues and profits than most experts expected.  Unfortunately for the company, its forecast for the fourth quarter then caused what can only be described as panic.

One of the largest click fraud rings ever detected, originating from China, has been shut down by click fraud monitoring firm Anchor Intelligence.

"This is really the first time anyone has ever been able to catch click fraudsters ‘in the act.’ Anchor has identified fraudsters down to the publisher site, IPs used (likely via botnets), and even the names and address of some perpetrators," an Anchor spokesperson told WebProNews. 

Baidu announced that it has launched a new mobile search service in Japan. The company says Baidu Japan wireless search will build upon the existing Baidu.jp services, which include web search, image search, and video search, and have special features tailored to Japanese users.

The company has already been offering wireless search in its home country China. There, it has partnerships with carriers and all of the major handset manufacturers.