Of course, this isn't for any humanitarian reasons. Hacking attempts from inside China, especially towards Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists, are the main cause for the announcement.
Google, as any other business, likes money. But they really hate it when anyone tries to mess with their products. And hackers are number one on Google's hate list.
Google will be discussing the matter with the Chinese government, to see if some sort of agreement can be reached. Given the intransigence of China on matters of censorship, that doesn't seem likely. And Google has said they will pull out of China if that happens.
Yet I have my doubts. China is a big market for Google, censorship or no. They could possibly pull off a deal. After all, they were willing to censor results in the first place to enter the Chinese market. Despite outrage in more liberal countries, they went ahead with it.
So yeah, this could just be some "make nice" PR on Google's part. Or they could really mean it. I'll be keeping an eye on this one to see if Google really has the guts to stand by their word or not.
