Remembering his youth and his family's reasons for leaving the Soviet Union, he "agonized over Google's decision to appease the communist government of China by allowing it to censor search engine results", but he decided that the Chinese would still be better off than without having Google available.[6]
On January 12, 2010, Google reported a large cyber attack on its computers and corporate infrastructure that began a month earlier, which included accessing two Gmail accounts and the theft of Google's intellectual property. After the attack was determined to have originated in China, the company stated that it would no longer agree to censor its search engine in China and may exit the country altogether. David Drummond, Google's Senior Vice President of Corporate Development, reported that "a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists, but that the attack also targeted 20 other large companies in the finance, technology, media and chemical sectors."[47][48] It was later reported that the attack had also targeted "one of Google's crown jewels, a password system that controls access by millions of users worldwide".[49]