Google Is Still Working on China Search Engine, Employees Claim 82
Google is still pursuing its plan to launch a censored search engine for China, The Intercept reported Monday, citing unnamed employees. From the report: Late last year, bosses moved engineers away from working on the controversial project, known as Dragonfly, and said that there were no current plans to launch it. However, a group of employees at the company was unsatisfied with the lack of information from leadership on the issue -- and took matters into their own hands. The group has identified ongoing work on a batch of code that is associated with the China search engine, according to three Google sources. [...] The employees have been keeping tabs on repositories of code that are stored on Google's computers, which they say is linked to Dragonfly. The code was created for two smartphone search apps -- named Maotai and Longfei -- that Google planned to roll out in China for users of Android and iOS mobile devices.
Flawed Understanding of Corporate America (Score:4, Insightful)
Me-thinks all you people need to get out and vote if you really want to create change where US companies do not do business with Totalitarian regimes and support censorship and servitude.
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It really isn't surprising. I mean look at Tesla. The rank and file really believe in a "mission" that is beyond making billions for the board members. It is rather astonishing, but I guess when you worship technology you find your saviours there.
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That's great: they are making a product they think they can make billions on. That isn't surprising. The surprising thing is that a lot of people believe that there is some "mission" above that. Tesla found a set of people to market to. There isn't anything beyond that.
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No that is not the "mission" that the rank-and-file are talking about. You are missing my point completely. My point is that the sole purpose of these tech companies are to make money. Nothing more. The worship of Google/Tesla/etc. are astounding, but there is a large intersection of tech and money right now so a lot of people are completely besotted with them. I see that unraveling very soon as people start seeing these companies for what they really are: just American corporations out to make a buck.
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It's not about "missions", it's about people voting with their dollars.
Some people don't care about destroying the planet even further and so those fucking idiots buy polluting, gas-guzzling SUVs.
Everyone else wants to buy electric cars because even coal-powered electric plants can do a better job at filtering the pollution than millions of cars. And you can make electricity a lot of different ways like hydro, wind, solar and nuclear.
And in theory, a well-maintained electric car from 2019 could still be use
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Thats nice. But that isn't what I am talking about.
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The problem is that the goal is to get Tesla rich, nothing else. There is no other mission. If they could make a lot more money creating coal-powered cars they would do it. The only green these companies see is money. Google figured out they could make a lot of money selling our data, and even more selling out the Chinese. So they did it. American corporations are not your buddy or benevolent. The fact that they even have "mission statements" is completely dishonest.
I call bull, mr/ms binary (Score:4, Informative)
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I did not know that, but damn I am even more impressed now. There might be a few truly not-so-evil business types out there. The wikipedia guy seemed pretty decent, too.
In the case of Google and these employees, I hope they keep making waves. Google, whether the execs like it or not, is built by regular engineers and regular people. They can make or break that company.
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There are two reasons for this:
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No, they are the same. Apple, Google, Microsoft, Tesla, Facebook, etc. They have a single goal. It is just amazing to me that people believe otherwise, but I guess that is the way it is. By the way: "Do no evil" was ALWAYS a joke. You just found out that it wasn't. But Google always knew it was.
Re: Flawed Understanding of Corporate America (Score:1)
Detroit Electric built 13,000 electric cars from 1907 to 1939.
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Impossible. Tesla made the first electric car.
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Why limit yourself to one approach when you can attack the problem in every way you can?
Perhaps a novel compromise (Score:2, Interesting)
1) No disclosure to Chinese authorities about who is searching for what.
2) A full public list visible on the web everywhere in the world (or everywhere except China) of all of the search terms and logic used to do the censoring (transparent censoring?? haha)
3) A monthly count disclosed on the non-China website of what percentage of searches were censored.
Or something like that.
Re:Perhaps a novel compromise (Score:4, Informative)
Perhaps a novel compromise
Wow... talk about not understanding how authoritarianism works.
In China, you do things their way; no highway option.
Ok ok then (Score:2)
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So you want them to break the law and give away a billion dollars in tech? Doesn't sound like a winning proposition in anyone's boardroom.
No no (Score:2)
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Doesn't sound like a winning proposition in anyone's boardroom.
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the new high-speed satellite Internet
Just look at how pissy the USA gets about Americans receiving content from foreign satellites. Not going to work in China.
Many countries are trying to regulate (Score:2)
Maybe it will fragment into 30 different country-nets instead of 2.
All the more reason why we need a distributed encrypted file-fragment layer that completely dissociates physical location from content, and a more secure and performant version of onion-routing for retrieval and coalescing of the information for the end user.
It will probably have to be buried, steganography-style, in thousands of seemingly innocent image or video serving sites world wide. I won
Someone will do it! (Score:2)
Politics vs. Execution (Score:1)
Generally anyone who disagrees with Google's approach to this is lacking what most people lack when it comes to effecting change. If you disagree with China's policies regarding censorship, why would you want Google to stop? If you stop the project entirely, then you don't have a seat at the table and China will make it on their own. At least Google gets to influence direction and build a level of comfort in that over time can help them ease up on their control. Policy exists because of cultural attitud
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Or I suppose, fragment into two polarized camps that don't listen to each other.
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If you disagree with China's policies regarding censorship, why would you want Google to stop?
Because the second it's complete, other nations will suddenly demand their own. This is about more than just China.
If you stop the project entirely, then you don't have a seat at the table and China will make it on their own.
They already have... and it's based on old stolen IP from Google.
At least Google gets to influence direction and build a level of comfort in that over time can help them ease up on their control.
In an authoritarian regime that is hellbent on becoming a massive exporter of goods by 2025? Please, don't make me laugh.
China's approach to free speech is extremely different than most Western thoughts on this, but when understood in the context of their history is completely understandable.
China's only approach to free speech has been to crush it. The people who want to speak the truth a jailed and/or killed. I don't think anyone in China wants to be jailed or killed.
China has gone through several cycles over the past several thousand years where affluence and economic growth leads to a cultural mismatch between classes, that often results in a period of major wars, destruction and death. The Chinese government knows this, and they know they're currently headed to one of those cycles again, as about 400M people live in a decent middle class lifestyle and about 900M people live in poverty today.
They should keep doing t
hmm (Score:2)
Not sure how Google employees think this works, but you don't get to tell your employer what to do.
Yes, China is awful. (And when I say that, I get called a right wing war monger by .... your average Google employee type.)
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So yes, toady cocksucker, you do get to tell your employer what you expect of them when it comes to violating ethical codes of conduct or working on secret projects that undermine freedoms or collude with autocratic govts.
And then you get reassigned to Siberia (it's a metaphor, look it up) or you get to walk the plank (another metaphor)
It's like that everywhere I've been to.
Go ahead, kick your boss' door down and tell him you refuse to work on anything that you find personally offensive. Do it. Right now. March in there and tell him off. Let's see how much time goes by before you're on the street with a box with your things in it.
The Real World has a habit of dulling even the keenest-edged bright-eyed idealist.
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Especially if the company used an image and reputation for not doing unethical things to attract that talent to begin with.
Yes because tracking your every moment and selling it to others is so ethical. That is the dumbest shit I've ever read on slashdot. And I'm sure a lot of people will agree there is a bunch of dumb shit said here daily. But you sir cut the cake.
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Go ahead, kick your boss' door down and tell him you refuse to work on anything that you find personally offensive. Do it. Right now. March in there and tell him off. Let's see how much time goes by before you're on the street with a box with your things in it.
I've done it. Multiple times in my career, at multiple employers, including Google. Not once has it led to firing, or any disciplinary action whatsoever. On at least one occasion it contributed to my promotion.
Many bosses are not only sympathetic to their employees' moral concerns, but appreciate the broader and deeper thinking that the existence of those concerns demonstrates. Integrity and morality are traits most companies find highly desirable in employees.
If your boss and your employer don't val
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Or, they unionize and do. That's literally what a union is for.
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Not sure how Google employees think this works, but you don't get to tell your employer what to do.
Employees have a right to try and change (or at least guide) the corporate culture of their employer. And, since the actions and reputation of the employer get reflected onto the employee, if they see the company doing something they feel is unethical, tarnishes the brand, or is in other ways detrimental to the well-being of the company they have a right to speak up to try and stop those actions.
I don't get the Hate for this project (Score:3)
Yes, being in China would suck. But their policies certainly aren't going to change because of a google.cn site.
There are numerous benefits to them setting up shop there:
- Taking money out of the Chinese economy and putting it into ours
- Giving Chinese citizens more information is better
- Allows Google to create a foothold in China. If they become a major player there, they might be able to effect change down the line
The only real downside is the fact the engine will probably fail and thus cost money.
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Spoken like a good technocrat.
Re: I don't get the Hate for this project (Score:2)
Nah. He spoke like a good collaborator.
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Yes, being in China would suck. But their policies certainly aren't going to change because of a google.cn site.
The second this censorship engine is complete, other nations will suddenly demand their own version too. This is about more than just China.
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While that is a good point that I hadn't considered before. I'm still not convinced:
- Other search engines already exist in a censored state in China (bing)
- I think if a country was going to be an asshole, I don't think it would depend on Google. They would just tell google search that they can't exist there without there without being censored.
Re: To be honest, who really cares (Score:2)
I know a man here in the City who used to work as a merc in various African border wars. He's a good man; albeit one with whom you would not want to have a fist fight. However he has no illusions that he was "killing terrorists" or any similar pap. He was a mercenary fighting on behalf of the highest bidder, that's it.