1. Google talks openly about the security breach, and in more detail than I would have ever imagined from such a tight-lipped organization. They should have just named the article “The Chinese government is funding cyber espionage against us, and we’re pissed.”

2. It’s likely that they were getting their butts kicked by Baidu (the competing Chinese search engine), and saw this as a grand opportunity, not to bow out gracefully, but to mask the real economic reasons for withdrawing. It’s likely Google would have continued to employ censorship if it was bringing in money hand over fist.