It has been dispiriting to see America's banks apparently stand for nothing more lofty than plunder. It has been demoralizing to see President Obama hiding from the Dalai Lama rather than offend China's rulers.So all that makes Google's decision to stand up to Chinese cyberoppression positively breathtaking. By announcing that it no longer plans to censor search results in China, even if that means it must withdraw from the country, Google is showing spine - a kind that few other companies or governments have shown toward Beijing.One result was immediate: Young Chinese have been visiting Google's headquarters in Beijing to deposit flowers and pay their respects.China promptly tried to censor the ensuing debate about its censorship, but many Chinese Twitter users went out of their way to praise Google. One from Guangdong declared: "It's not Google that's withdrawing from China, it's China that's withdrawing from the world."Cynics say that Google tried to turn a business setback (it lags in the Chinese market behind a local search engine, Baidu) into a bid to burnish its brand. Whatever the motivations, it marks a refreshing contrast to Yahoo assisting the Chinese government in sending four dissidents - Shi Tao, Li Zhi, Jiang Lijun and Wang Xiaoning - to prison for terms of up to 10 years.