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Why should there be a different standard for Google and other tech companies to not expand into China. If we have a problem with how their government works pol

Why should there be a different standard for Google and other tech companies to not expand into China. If we have a problem with how their government works policy should be applied that prevents/manages how businesses subject to our laws operate abroad. The majority of people don't really care how corporations behave. If they did Google search/gmail/maps would not be so popular. They have the right price point(0$) for people to ignore any moral misgivings they may have. I'm guilty of this and up to my neck in google services

macspoofing 8y ago
>Why should there be a different standard for Google and other tech companies to not expand into China. This exactly. I would even make a stronger case. It's not fair to expect a technology company to fight a major world economic power. This is a failure of US and EU governments. They should pressure China to liberalize their government and provide a level economic playing field (it is insane what China gets away with with respect to the roadblocks it places on Western companies to do business there).
- Alir3z4 8y ago
  Neither US or EU are the world police. They have no rights and should not have any to pressure any country to push their own idea of how things should work in another country, just like how China and others don't demand such and even if they do that doesn't make it less wrong.
  - cazum 8y ago
    this is a weak argument, as it can be made for literally any situation. Israel massacring Palestinians? Hey man, they can do whatever they want, we don't have any right to tell them not to and it doesn't make what they're doing any less wrong!
    - it_learnses 8y ago
      You mean Palestinians trying to massacre as many jews as possible and Israel stopping them due to their superior defense capabilities.
  - manigandham 8y ago
    They actually are the world police. Sovereignty, nations, and conflict between them are part of human nature.
  - chillacy 8y ago
    If government can’t produce collective action, then market forces will never overcome the prisoners dilemma on its own.
  - mywacaday 8y ago
    Agree they are not the world police but for EU/US citizens they are our government and should reflect our views and morals. Do we believe in censorship? Do we believe in borderline cheap labor? I don't have the answers but there are hard questions there, not just for our governments but for us as voters.
  - Mediterraneo10 8y ago
    > They have no rights and should not have any to pressure any country to push their own idea of how things should work in another country To believe that China does not attempt to influence other countries is naive. China puts a great deal of pressure on other nations with regard to things like recognition of Taiwan or inviting the Dalai Lama to speak. These have occasionally been in the news over the last few years, e.g. China’s retaliatory measures against Norway for Liu Xiabo winning the Nobel Peace Prize, but in fact they go back decades – when Michelangelo Antonioni was showing his documentary film Chung Kuo around in the early 1970s, in European countries where a screening was organized the local Chinese embassy would raise scandal.
    - neom 8y ago
      China certainly has a very strong view on the make-up of the region, much is historical, some of it fair. However, we don't see them going around converting everyone to communism. In fact, even all the investment they are doing in Africa right now, very little of the social aspects of china are being exported. Xi Jinping has always maintained: china is not for export.
      - Mediterraneo10 8y ago
        > In fact, even all the investment they are doing in Africa right now, very little of the social aspects of china are being exported. China has repeatedly lobbied, with some success now, for East African nations to adopt its "Great Firewall" network infrastructure.
    - vermontdevil 8y ago
      Don't forget the pressure on Marriott to fire an employee for clicking 'like' on a Tibet-related topic. And for pressuring airlines not to list Taiwan on their websites for booking.
  - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
    > Neither US or EU are the world police If an American pays a Chinese businessman in China a bribe, that's an FCPA [1] violation. If the U.S. government wanted to prevent American technology companies from helping China's dictator build a modern dystopia, it would have precedent. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Corrupt_Practices_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Corrupt_Practices_Act
  - ckocagil 8y ago
    The US and EU have (relatively) free markets where Chinese companies can compete. But not the other way. They can simply stop trading with China unless China opens their market as well.
  - simias 8y ago
    I think that point would have some merit if US, EU and China worked completely in isolation at every level. Let everybody sort their mess like they want. But clearly that's not the case, China's economy is very tightly linked to ours, as such the way we trade with them influences their internal politics. When a US or EU company moves production to China it's not politically neutral, this company implicitly endorses the Chinese political system. As such I don't see why we couldn't regulate these things to suit our principles and interests. It's not about saying "stop censoring the internet or we'll nuke you", it's about saying "if you want to do business with us we demand that you meet these standards, otherwise no biggy, we'll just go elsewhere." And China does attempt to do the same thing, for instance in many African countries. It's less obvious because they're still ramping up their diplomacy, US and EU have a huge headstart there.
  - MarkMc 8y ago
    Would you apply the same policy to countries with worse human-rights violations, like North Korea?
- mocae 8y ago
  You make it look like google would starve without China. Like they have to go there and participate. Shifting the blame for your lack of ethics onto some government is ridiculous in this context. My god...where is your shame?
  - macspoofing 8y ago
    >My god...where is your shame? Do you have no sense of your own hypocrisy? I am certain you have 0 qualms in using and buying Chinese manufactured products, or buying services and products from companies that operate in China. And yet here we are with you lecturing from your soapbox on who should be or shouldn't be ashamed of their actions. Look to yourself first before moralizing at others.
    - mocae 8y ago
      There is a difference between not having a choice and openly advertising and justifying unethical behavior. The fact that this is the only sentence you've touched speaks for itself.
      - macspoofing 8y ago
        >There is a difference between not having a choice You have no choice? >and justifying unethical behavior. I get it. It's not unethical when you engage in commerce with a regime you find unethical, or when you buy from all the other companies that manufacture their goods in China ... but it's unethical if Google doesn't want to ignore 1.4 billion people? >The fact that this is the only sentence you've touched speaks for itself. As opposed to the other three snide and arrogant sentences? If you'd like a good-faith discussion please lead by example.
        xvector 8y ago
        > It's not unethical when you engage in commerce with a regime you find unethical or when you buy from all the other companies that manufacture their goods in China Who says it's not unethical? Why are you putting words in peoples' mouths? On one hand you talk about having a good-faith discussion but then you go ahead and base your argument off of words you've put in someone else's mouth. > but it's unethical if Google doesn't want to ignore 1.4 billion people? Most people find corruption of data far worse than the absence of data. I'd rather not be told anything than be told a lie.
- giantsloth 8y ago
  You’re an immoral and evil person. Anyone who makes excuses for the powerful restricting the rights of people with limited power is a horrible human being. You should be absolutely ashamed of yourself.
  - dang 8y ago
    We've banned this account for egregiously violating the site guidelines with this comment and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17661668 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17661668. You can't post this way, regardless of how right you are or feel. We all know what the online shaming culture leads to, and we don't want that here. If you don't want to be banned on HN, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. Those are at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
- baybal2 8y ago
  What people here don't understand is that the talk about censorship is of less than secondary importance there. China's priority here is totally not to censor them, it is to conduct the "handshaking ritual" and have them becoming subject under China's "law." A "blood pack" - making them partners in crime. The same was with Yahoo. They came to China talking only about "search," but got asked about "personal data of all China's opposition members residing in US." Not only they gave everything to China, but put extreme effort to cover their "special relationship" with China's ministry of interior. In this light, please take a look at very, very close relationship Google tried to establish with Russian government in period of 2005-2010. We are talking about nothing less than first person accounts of people involved certifying that Google was sending all kinds of "consultants" to Russian political establishment, training them in online campaigning. Simultaneously, pages of Russian political opposition did disappear in Google's search. In light of recent events, this should be subject to much scrutiny. P.S. : Additional comment on Google. At some moment they snapped after all. They closed their Russian development centre, and evacuated key personnel to Switzerland in unprecedented visa deal with government of Zurich. P.P.S. : On person whom Sundar Pichay was meeting. I read name Wang Huning in the article, and instantly I felt that something "clicked." The name was familiar. Wang Huning is the man who is the real propaganda chief in the communist party. To know more of his view of USA, please read his work titled "America against America." I will not be surprised at all if he is the man entrusted with running their stratagems targeting USA.
  - cryoshon 8y ago
    very interesting. can you provide me with some sources to learn more? this is potentially the corruption story of the century
    - baybal2 8y ago
      >very interesting. can you provide me with some sources to learn more? There was a minor intern in Russian presidential administration. Nicknamed "rLode" in the Internets. I happened to knew him as I attended language courses ran by high school he was attending. He held his home page there "http://rlode.narod.ru/main.html" http://rlode.narod.ru/main.html" a man of unconcealed, borderline rabid views on social class. If you ever unearth an archived version of the page, I guarantee you will have some fun time reading it. If you dig further, finding his offline contacts are not hard. Second was a Far Eastern strongman nicknamed "Twix" or "Nuts," man running arms trade in the Far East. How he came upon the info, I didn't know. Just assume that being a "big man" in Russia involves having lots of ears. I think you still can find him making appearances online on Russian .onion arms sales sites under different Japanese cartoons themed pseudonyms. As for people of Google's side, ask any man relocated from Moscow to Zurich. Few people I knew there voiced their extreme surprise with their relocation coming unannounced, and being done with near military level of coordination. Officials were an everyday sight in their office on Balchug street. Just the fact that their office was on an island just a river across from Kremlin tells a lot. Nobody pays a ennormous premium to have office in this special place without having "being close to Kremlin" factor in mind. On Wang, I once read the very few English translation of 半月谈 with some excerpts from his works. I never read the complete book. But the general theme is him telling party members to not to fear the USA as it is a frustrated, insecure, diseased society - something that has not to be feared, but taken advantage of. His main discontent with USA is it spreading that "plague" around the world. Following, it is CCPs role as "a global messiah" (oh my....) to rectify that, showing world "a different vision of a successful state system."
- pytyper2 8y ago
  Do you remember the "Don't Be Evil" campaign? Google literally rose to prominence with this as their slogan. I would expect a company whose slogan is "Don't Be Evil" to completely shun a country who wants censored search.
  - darepublic 8y ago
    I thought Google performed censorship in North America too. After Trump's election people were crying for more censorship on facebook and Google.
    - pytyper2 8y ago
      I think they censor everywhere to a certain extent, this seems more like a concerted effort along the lines of, "what are we going to allow them to view" and not "should we remove the child porn links and isis videos and pirated movie links now that we know about them"
  - gt_ 8y ago
    You would? Google is private company. If you want a powerful entity to live up to your standards, you should look into creating a government. I recommend a democracy; and hold your neighbors accountable for treating it as their own. Together, you can eventually build something to be proud of. It will probably never be perfect, but it will be yours for as long as you take care of it.
    - pytyper2 8y ago
      It was their standard, Eric Schmidt stood on many stages and said the same. Google being a private company has no bearing on my previous comment. Private companies don't have to be amoral. A much more capitalistic move would be to use their information and computation power to devalue the Yuan and acquire large swathes of the now defunct China and rename it Google. Now, not only can you search Google you can go to Google. This would be much more valuable than some pleb ad revenue.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
- nailer 8y ago
  Why not both? - American companies stop facilitating totalitarian regimes - World governments also prompt totalitarian regimes to move towards democracy
  - pravbeatle 8y ago
    That's a naive and simplistic view of the world. I grew up in the Middle East and really believed they needed some democracy. In reality, moving to Democracy would result in more radicalization and instability and not less. Without going into a long rant, there are toxic forces within many countries that would take their country on a profoundly bad route, by any universal standard, if Democracy were forced upon them.
  - nailer 8y ago
    I'd like to reply to pravebeatle anyway: I disagree with them, but they're polite and follow the HN guidelines, and their reply doesn't deserve to be flagged. I know what you're saying - there's a lot of instability in the world and sometimes people make very poor choices - but democracy is a way to better handle the turbulence. In essence, it gives us the ability to handle the coup that occurs every few years in unstable environments with less bloodshed - rather than the military taking control and ousting a leader, and a bunch of people dying or being imprisoned, another party takes over at the ballot box. The newly elected ruler might be a really bad choice, but it's the people's perjorative to choose their leaders and it's a much better alternative than another coup.
  - gt_ 8y ago
    > Why not both? By definition, “companies” are incentivized to prioritize capital pursuit over moral pursuit. It’s actually the most fundamental part of the whole concept. Many democratic governments in the world, and particularly the most wealthy and powerful ones, are run by people who are (to a large unmeasurable extent) incentivized to do what companies want them to do. This is not a fundamental concept of a democratic government, but as long as the electorate fails to take responsibility for their own government’s behavior, the incentives remain in the company’s favor, which doesn’t make a very good case for democracy. Democracy is a very slippery concept. America, for example, is well understood to not be a democracy, but it’s people seem to have convinced themselves it is. These kinds of miscalculations are really at the root of “why not”.
- StreamBright 8y ago
  And why should they do that? What was the last time Western interventionism brought any good for the world? Who are the US and EU representing to tell other countries how to live their lives??
  - gt_ 8y ago
    Right. If the US is representing anybody, it’s Google. For the Americans who want your government to represent you, you’ve got some work to do. Most Americans I know speak of their government as though it were just some poorly run business that somebody else is responsible for. Get your own house in order before you criticize others peoples’.
    - barnesto 8y ago
      get out of your echo chamber and speak to more Americans
      - ionised 8y ago
        He's on HN. It's an American-centric site.
  - sykhic 8y ago
    The Korean War ended up benefitting South Korea in the sense that they didn’t up like North Korea. The free trade agreements have largely been responsible for large numbers of the world's population improving their living standard. There are other examples of intervention being good. Of course there are lots of examples of intervention being bad. There is nothing special about Western intervention vs. intervention by other regional powers. Nations with power rarely use it for the well being of the world. But shouldn’t one strive to have governments do what you consider to be right?
    - knuththetruth 8y ago
      >The Korean War ended up benefitting South Korea in the sense that they didn’t up like North Korea This is an incorrect understanding of Korean history. US anti-communist policy played no small part in creating North Korea in the first place. In the postwar period, US support for the right-wing dictator Syngman Rhee, who murdered tens of thousands of Korean citizens he suspected were his political opponents, empowered and drew popular support to Kim Il-Sung. Sung was further bolstered by the US giving favored status to Japan over Korea, forcing them, for example, to purchase goods and expertise from their brutal, former colonial rulers. With this state of affairs, Sung, a former anti-Japanese resistance fighter, was successful in persuading many that that the US-backed rule of Rhee was just an extension of the pre-War colonial rule, ultimately devolving into the never-ending civil war we have today. This in no way benefitted the south, but instead has been a nearly 70 year long drag on their economy, as well as their development into a liberal democracy (which really didn’t happen until a popular revolt in the 80s because the continued US to provide financing and support to authoritarian rulers in the south).
- mtgx 8y ago
  > It's not fair to expect a technology company to fight a major world economic power. This is a failure of US and EU governments. Okay, so if the US and EU governments would announce tomorrow that they will start a trade war with China and stop US/EU companies from trading with China unless China immediately stops all censorship/human rights abuses, would Google/other tech companies go along with that, or will they lobby against that move? The tech companies are not as innocent or blameless as you portray them to be.
- panarky 8y ago
  > It's not fair to expect a technology company to fight a major world economic power Google fights major world powers every day [1, 2]. And Google doesn't have to fight to force the Chinese government to stop censoring their citizens. Google can simply choose not to partner with repressive regimes in enabling and legitimizing censorship and mass surveillance. [1] https://transparencyreport.google.com/user-data/overview https://transparencyreport.google.com/user-data/overview [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/google-encrypts-data-amid-backlash-against-nsa-spying/2013/09/06/9acc3c20-1722-11e3-a2ec-b47e45e6f8ef_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/google-en...
  - macspoofing 8y ago
    >Google fights major world powers every day That's right, if by 'fight' you mean following rules laid out in countries that it operates in. If the rules are completely skewed against them (and other foreign companies) as they are in China, they have no recourse other than to appeal to their government to lobby on their behalf. Facebook is in a similar position with respect to Russian interference. The narrative pushed by people like Kara Swisher of Recode is that Facebook should have fought a major world power with limitless resources for cyber attacks and because they didn't they are responsible for the damage, instead of demanding to know why the previous and present American administrations allowed an American company and public be harassed by a belligerent foreign power. >Google can simply choose not to partner with repressive regimes in enabling and legitimizing censorship and mass surveillance. And you can choose not to buy Chinese-made products and thereby no longer support and legitimize a repressive regime ... but hey, here we are.
    - panarky 8y ago
      > following rules laid out in countries that it operates in Exactly my point. Google can choose not to operate in countries where the rules are too egregiously antithetical to their mission. > Facebook should have fought a major world power Facebook is responsible for the damage because Facebook built the tools that enabled bad actors to hack democracies and Facebook profited from it (in the short term). Google is in a similar position. Should they build the tools that enable systematic repression and profit from it? Sure, they can claim they're "only following orders" but when has that ever worked out well?
- white-flame 8y ago
  The very notion of independent sovereignty of nations means that you can't and shouldn't expect to normalize behavior between countries. If doing business in the USA is free & good, many outsider businesses will do business there as well. If doing business in China is not all free & good, outsider business won't do business there. How much that hurts foreign businesses vs hurts China is up for debate. But governments individually rule what goes on in their borders, and use those rules both for internal ideological pursuit as well as to attract or detract external interest, as is their role. "Fairness" of doing business isn't exactly extreme human rights violations or anything. (Other behaviors are, but not this particular point you're making.)
ForHackernews 8y ago
Are you just asking why anyone should have any ethical standards at all? Presumably even you think there is some line a tech company shouldn't cross, right?
- mywacaday 8y ago
  Absolutely there are lines companies should not cross but that's what we have laws and policy for. That's why we have GDPR/AML/Anti-Bribery/Anti-Corruption legislation. We all know they are wrong but we still have laws even if some of practices are accepted locally, small bribes etc. Contrived example, if a printing company wanted to expand into China they would not be allowed print anti Chinese government documents. Would we be as up in arms about this or should there be a law saying that until China increases human rightsn EU/US companies can't work there and Chinese companies can't work/sell to EU/US? Obviously this won't/can't happen given our dependence on cheap Chinese manufacturing and our need for year on year growth.
  - ForHackernews 8y ago
    So if it's not illegal, in your book, a company should just do it? Let's say Saudi Arabia approaches Facebook and wants access to profile and location data to help round up all the gay people in the country to be executed. Maybe they even offer to pay a lot of money, so it'll be profitable. That's fine with you? Those local laws, amirite?
- simias 8y ago
  You mean like "do no evil"? I have absolutely no faith at all that any large company can really stick to some moral compass. Eventually money corrupts all. Any individual morality and sense of responsibility gets diluted to the point where it disappears completely. I mean, let's take your reasoning to its logical conclusion: I think most would agree that not paying taxes isn't very ethical, does it mean that we shouldn't have any laws and regulations and controlling bodies surrounding these topics because it's a line "a tech company shouldn't cross"? If you don't put a cop on the line and there's money on the other side I can assure you that it will be crossed. Raising outrage at the company is not an effective way to enforce the law (although it can work at times).
throw_way8882 8y ago
eh.... I think I agree in principle with you, BUT something doesn't sit quite right. I'm currently in China (hence the throwaway account) and I think any level of collaboration with their government on restricting access to free information for the Chinese people should ABSOLUTELY BE CHALLENGED. Not doing so prolongs their government's ability to not reform vs getting caught in middle-income trap from lack of 0 to 1 innovation.
- simias 8y ago
  >I think any level of collaboration with their government on restricting access to free information for the Chinese people should ABSOLUTELY BE CHALLENGED I don't think that's the parent point, it's more that if you do consider that doing business with the Chinese state is unethical then it makes more sense to push for regulation rather than expect big multinational companies to Do The Right Thing. Right now it seems that we're in a race to the bottom and the Chinese government is making the rules.
  - mocae 8y ago
    > it makes more sense to push for regulation rather than expect big multinational companies to Do The Right Thing How does it make more sense? You can't influence foreign policy of your government and you won't find a party with such specific topics which is also powerful enough to actually accomplish something. With a company like google you can create a shitstorm that will cost them. You can break a companies reputation with a hand full influencers those days. PS. a company is not a robot (we'd even expect ethics from them). It consists of humans and we should expect acting ethical from a human. They don't get a license to kill the moment they enter their office.
- mywacaday 8y ago
  This is the key comment for me. A person in China has an opinion that does not agree with the government and feels so threatened voicing an opinion that would't merit a second thought in the EU/US that they have to go anonymous. How can we be comfortable with google or any company going to China and effectively saying yup, thats ok.
mocae 8y ago
"Don't be evil" if you marketed yourself in such a way, you shouldn't be surprised if the general public applies different standards to you.
- mywacaday 8y ago
  When I read that line I though it read for a second "Don't be evil ;-)"
deleted 8y ago
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tssva 8y ago
Almost all countries require compliance with some level of government mandated censorship. Why is China being singled out? Many western and middle eastern countries that tech companies operate in today have severe censorship and monitoring requirements. Some of these countries with have similar or worse human rights records. You hear very little if any uproar about it.
- 394549 8y ago
  > Almost all countries require compliance with some level of government mandated censorship. Why is China being singled out? Because the purpose and intent of the censorship matters. China's censorship is about suppressing dissent against a human-rights violating authoritarian regime. Western censorship is about suppressing harmful crimes like child abuse and sometimes intellectual property violations. Those goals are not comparable. Also, China is massively powerful and influential. Many of the countries with similarly strict censorship regimes are so small and weak that they'll never attract the same kind of attention.
astronautjones 8y ago
> Why should there be a different standard for Google and other tech companies to not expand into China. If we have a problem with how their government works policy should be applied that prevents/manages how businesses subject to our laws operate abroad. they set that standard for themselves...
alexandercrohde 8y ago
No. - Most people care a lot how corporations behave. Many corporations have a very, very bad reputation and it affects their business. E.G: I know more than one person who deleted their facebook. - Google got its popularity by indicating it was not a standard corporation ("Don't be evil" and acting on it). Google is free to sell that away, but if it does it loses a hard-to-quantify place in our idealistic hearts. - Maybe you're right, maybe we should hold other tech companies to a higher standard too. - The US Gov has no effective means to change the structure of China's government. It also cares more about trade and stability than the freedom of China's population.
- esquivalience 8y ago
  That's a straw man which conflates Google with the regulations it is proposing to follow. Google wants to do business in China; and it does so by obeying Chinese regulations. It obeys the law. End of story. If you want to change it, lobby the PRC.
  - ohyes 8y ago
    No it doesn't. The regulations in China are immoral. Obeying immoral laws is also immoral. (If the law says 'gas the [ethnic group]' it is still wrong to do it). If Google must follow immoral laws to operate in China, they should not operate in China. I don't have any pull with the PRC but I can boycott Google.
    - gt_ 8y ago
      It sounds like you might be missing a few things. Private companies are, by definition, private entities responsible for prioritizing whatever and however they choose. If you want to have input in a powerful entity, I really recommend starting a government. If you have an old one layout around, maybe dust if off and use that, but it’ll probably take some work. I don’t know where you live, but in the US, there’s a bunch of people who are interested in reviving their government entity. They can’t do it alone, though. Here’s the website: https://www.dsausa.org https://www.dsausa.org
rdlecler1 8y ago
Wrong. If China becomes a big business unit for Google then China can use that leverage to start influencing Google’s international operations. We already see China doing this with other companies.
cryoshon 8y ago
>Why should there be a different standard for Google and other tech companies to not expand into China there is no different standard. it is unethical to aid totalitarian states in their oppression of their people. that standard is crystal clear, and google is on the wrong side of it. waffling regarding corporate responsibility is irrelevant because the question of whether the actor is a corporation or not has nothing to do with the standard itself. once again: the moral issue is very clear on what is acceptable and what is not acceptable. selling widgets to the chinese is not in violation of that standard. offering a product that is neutered so as to be a tool of oppression is in clear violation of the standard. the question of china using these tools to oppress their population is not up for debate. china is a police state. for ethnic minorities like the uighurs, the falun gong, the chinese muslims, etc, that police state is operationalized to eradicate and prevent any presence in society. this is not right. it is not right to help the chinese state keep groups of people subjugated and starving. the apologists should be ashamed. google should be ashamed. google employees should be ashamed, and outraged.
deleted 8y ago
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panarky 8y ago
> Why should there be a different standard for Google Because Google "is not a conventional company" [1]. A tired trope on HN is that corporations cannot and should not be ethical entities. They are legally mandated to maximize shareholder value, and this usually requires taking actions that people find morally repugnant. This is a myth and it is horseshit. Google's mission is to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful" [2]. Larry and Sergey knew that realizing its mission requires a long-term focus and a moral center that is unusual for modern corporations. The public must trust Google to do the right thing even when it's not in Google's short-term interest. Organic search results skewed by ad payments or censorship is antithetical to Google's mission. Of course they could make huge short-term profits by compromising the quality and completeness of information, but they've wisely fought against this from the beginning. This is a rational strategy to maximize the long-term value of the company, and it's worked incredibly well [3]. It would be a crying shame to stop now. [1] https://abc.xyz/investor/founders-letters/2004/ipo-letter.html https://abc.xyz/investor/founders-letters/2004/ipo-letter.ht... [2] https://www.google.com/about/our-company/ https://www.google.com/about/our-company/ [3] https://imgur.com/a/LfuM4eQ https://imgur.com/a/LfuM4eQ
- yoran 8y ago
  From an outsider perspective who does not know much about what has or is going on at Google, I was always under the impression that Sergey was the main "don't be evil" guy. Could this development be a sign that some of the power of the founders is diminishing within Google and has transferred to e.g. major shareholders?
- mywacaday 8y ago
  Maybe I worded it badly, I meant why should manufacturing companies be allowed into china with no fanfare but google be ostracized for doing the same. If what they are doing is legal so be it, what we want to be legal is the real question. Should we be doing business with countries that don't have the same beliefs that we do? The other side is that encouraging companies like google into China could help in the long run.
- kalleboo 8y ago
  > This is a myth and it is horseshit. Exactly. As for an example of a company showing some backbone... https://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/tim-cook-soundly-rejects-politics-of-the-ncppr-suggests-group-sell-apples-s https://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/tim-cook-soundly-rej...: "When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind," he said, "I don't consider the bloody ROI." He said that the same thing about environmental issues, worker safety, and other areas where Apple is a leader. He didn't stop there, however, as he looked directly at the NCPPR representative and said, "If you want me to do things only for ROI reasons, you should get out of this stock." (of course, Apple does do business in China and practices app censorship there, so...)
iamshs 8y ago
Because it will degrade democracy in countries like India. They will implement this censored version in a jiff. Government rules and laws can always change, this project means they will never change towards the better and not allow people to rake in the freedom that democracy implements. This project is certain to weaken democracy all around.
tanilama 8y ago
That US excetioptonalism should be put into bed, better for good. With all that happens in US, why would any American companies would assume they still have a moral high ground to demand things?
smsm42 8y ago
> The majority of people don't really care how corporations behave. This is not true, people care, but not enough to make them stay away from Google. Violating privacy is not that high on most people's mind. If we knew, for example, that Google search engine uses child slave labour, a lot of people would stay away from it. But if it's just remembers what you searched for, most people kinda care, but not enough to inconvenience themselves by using something else. It's not binary, it's a spectrum. And new developments move people's opinions along this spectrum.
sdkaufman 8y ago
Exactly - Microsoft (Bing, Office 365, Hotmail, OneDrive etc) has been operating in China forever, and Bing cooperates with state censorship just as you'd expect. But the minute Google does the same thing, everyone loses their minds. Is this because of expectations (i.e. no one expected MS to hold the moral high ground, but Google was famous for its "Do no evil" mantra)? In which case, well, maybe Google's branding backfired in this case :-/
- ehsankia 8y ago
  Don't forget Apple, and they do far worse: https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/17/apples-icloud-user-data-in-china-is-now-handled-by-a-state-owned-mobile-operator/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/17/apples-icloud-user-data-in...

macspoofing 8y ago

>Why should there be a different standard for Google and other tech companies to not expand into China. This exactly. I would even make a stronger case. It's not fair to expect a technology company to fight a major world economic power. This is a failure of US and EU governments. They should pressure China to liberalize their government and provide a level economic playing field (it is insane what China gets away with with respect to the roadblocks it places on Western companies to do business there).

Alir3z4 8y ago
Neither US or EU are the world police. They have no rights and should not have any to pressure any country to push their own idea of how things should work in another country, just like how China and others don't demand such and even if they do that doesn't make it less wrong.
- cazum 8y ago
  this is a weak argument, as it can be made for literally any situation. Israel massacring Palestinians? Hey man, they can do whatever they want, we don't have any right to tell them not to and it doesn't make what they're doing any less wrong!
  - it_learnses 8y ago
    You mean Palestinians trying to massacre as many jews as possible and Israel stopping them due to their superior defense capabilities.
- manigandham 8y ago
  They actually are the world police. Sovereignty, nations, and conflict between them are part of human nature.
- chillacy 8y ago
  If government can’t produce collective action, then market forces will never overcome the prisoners dilemma on its own.
- mywacaday 8y ago
  Agree they are not the world police but for EU/US citizens they are our government and should reflect our views and morals. Do we believe in censorship? Do we believe in borderline cheap labor? I don't have the answers but there are hard questions there, not just for our governments but for us as voters.
- Mediterraneo10 8y ago
  > They have no rights and should not have any to pressure any country to push their own idea of how things should work in another country To believe that China does not attempt to influence other countries is naive. China puts a great deal of pressure on other nations with regard to things like recognition of Taiwan or inviting the Dalai Lama to speak. These have occasionally been in the news over the last few years, e.g. China’s retaliatory measures against Norway for Liu Xiabo winning the Nobel Peace Prize, but in fact they go back decades – when Michelangelo Antonioni was showing his documentary film Chung Kuo around in the early 1970s, in European countries where a screening was organized the local Chinese embassy would raise scandal.
  - neom 8y ago
    China certainly has a very strong view on the make-up of the region, much is historical, some of it fair. However, we don't see them going around converting everyone to communism. In fact, even all the investment they are doing in Africa right now, very little of the social aspects of china are being exported. Xi Jinping has always maintained: china is not for export.
    - Mediterraneo10 8y ago
      > In fact, even all the investment they are doing in Africa right now, very little of the social aspects of china are being exported. China has repeatedly lobbied, with some success now, for East African nations to adopt its "Great Firewall" network infrastructure.
  - vermontdevil 8y ago
    Don't forget the pressure on Marriott to fire an employee for clicking 'like' on a Tibet-related topic. And for pressuring airlines not to list Taiwan on their websites for booking.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > Neither US or EU are the world police If an American pays a Chinese businessman in China a bribe, that's an FCPA [1] violation. If the U.S. government wanted to prevent American technology companies from helping China's dictator build a modern dystopia, it would have precedent. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Corrupt_Practices_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Corrupt_Practices_Act
- ckocagil 8y ago
  The US and EU have (relatively) free markets where Chinese companies can compete. But not the other way. They can simply stop trading with China unless China opens their market as well.
- simias 8y ago
  I think that point would have some merit if US, EU and China worked completely in isolation at every level. Let everybody sort their mess like they want. But clearly that's not the case, China's economy is very tightly linked to ours, as such the way we trade with them influences their internal politics. When a US or EU company moves production to China it's not politically neutral, this company implicitly endorses the Chinese political system. As such I don't see why we couldn't regulate these things to suit our principles and interests. It's not about saying "stop censoring the internet or we'll nuke you", it's about saying "if you want to do business with us we demand that you meet these standards, otherwise no biggy, we'll just go elsewhere." And China does attempt to do the same thing, for instance in many African countries. It's less obvious because they're still ramping up their diplomacy, US and EU have a huge headstart there.
- MarkMc 8y ago
  Would you apply the same policy to countries with worse human-rights violations, like North Korea?
mocae 8y ago
You make it look like google would starve without China. Like they have to go there and participate. Shifting the blame for your lack of ethics onto some government is ridiculous in this context. My god...where is your shame?
- macspoofing 8y ago
  >My god...where is your shame? Do you have no sense of your own hypocrisy? I am certain you have 0 qualms in using and buying Chinese manufactured products, or buying services and products from companies that operate in China. And yet here we are with you lecturing from your soapbox on who should be or shouldn't be ashamed of their actions. Look to yourself first before moralizing at others.
  - mocae 8y ago
    There is a difference between not having a choice and openly advertising and justifying unethical behavior. The fact that this is the only sentence you've touched speaks for itself.
    - macspoofing 8y ago
      >There is a difference between not having a choice You have no choice? >and justifying unethical behavior. I get it. It's not unethical when you engage in commerce with a regime you find unethical, or when you buy from all the other companies that manufacture their goods in China ... but it's unethical if Google doesn't want to ignore 1.4 billion people? >The fact that this is the only sentence you've touched speaks for itself. As opposed to the other three snide and arrogant sentences? If you'd like a good-faith discussion please lead by example.
      - xvector 8y ago
        > It's not unethical when you engage in commerce with a regime you find unethical or when you buy from all the other companies that manufacture their goods in China Who says it's not unethical? Why are you putting words in peoples' mouths? On one hand you talk about having a good-faith discussion but then you go ahead and base your argument off of words you've put in someone else's mouth. > but it's unethical if Google doesn't want to ignore 1.4 billion people? Most people find corruption of data far worse than the absence of data. I'd rather not be told anything than be told a lie.
giantsloth 8y ago
You’re an immoral and evil person. Anyone who makes excuses for the powerful restricting the rights of people with limited power is a horrible human being. You should be absolutely ashamed of yourself.
- dang 8y ago
  We've banned this account for egregiously violating the site guidelines with this comment and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17661668 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17661668. You can't post this way, regardless of how right you are or feel. We all know what the online shaming culture leads to, and we don't want that here. If you don't want to be banned on HN, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. Those are at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
baybal2 8y ago
What people here don't understand is that the talk about censorship is of less than secondary importance there. China's priority here is totally not to censor them, it is to conduct the "handshaking ritual" and have them becoming subject under China's "law." A "blood pack" - making them partners in crime. The same was with Yahoo. They came to China talking only about "search," but got asked about "personal data of all China's opposition members residing in US." Not only they gave everything to China, but put extreme effort to cover their "special relationship" with China's ministry of interior. In this light, please take a look at very, very close relationship Google tried to establish with Russian government in period of 2005-2010. We are talking about nothing less than first person accounts of people involved certifying that Google was sending all kinds of "consultants" to Russian political establishment, training them in online campaigning. Simultaneously, pages of Russian political opposition did disappear in Google's search. In light of recent events, this should be subject to much scrutiny. P.S. : Additional comment on Google. At some moment they snapped after all. They closed their Russian development centre, and evacuated key personnel to Switzerland in unprecedented visa deal with government of Zurich. P.P.S. : On person whom Sundar Pichay was meeting. I read name Wang Huning in the article, and instantly I felt that something "clicked." The name was familiar. Wang Huning is the man who is the real propaganda chief in the communist party. To know more of his view of USA, please read his work titled "America against America." I will not be surprised at all if he is the man entrusted with running their stratagems targeting USA.
- cryoshon 8y ago
  very interesting. can you provide me with some sources to learn more? this is potentially the corruption story of the century
  - baybal2 8y ago
    >very interesting. can you provide me with some sources to learn more? There was a minor intern in Russian presidential administration. Nicknamed "rLode" in the Internets. I happened to knew him as I attended language courses ran by high school he was attending. He held his home page there "http://rlode.narod.ru/main.html" http://rlode.narod.ru/main.html" a man of unconcealed, borderline rabid views on social class. If you ever unearth an archived version of the page, I guarantee you will have some fun time reading it. If you dig further, finding his offline contacts are not hard. Second was a Far Eastern strongman nicknamed "Twix" or "Nuts," man running arms trade in the Far East. How he came upon the info, I didn't know. Just assume that being a "big man" in Russia involves having lots of ears. I think you still can find him making appearances online on Russian .onion arms sales sites under different Japanese cartoons themed pseudonyms. As for people of Google's side, ask any man relocated from Moscow to Zurich. Few people I knew there voiced their extreme surprise with their relocation coming unannounced, and being done with near military level of coordination. Officials were an everyday sight in their office on Balchug street. Just the fact that their office was on an island just a river across from Kremlin tells a lot. Nobody pays a ennormous premium to have office in this special place without having "being close to Kremlin" factor in mind. On Wang, I once read the very few English translation of 半月谈 with some excerpts from his works. I never read the complete book. But the general theme is him telling party members to not to fear the USA as it is a frustrated, insecure, diseased society - something that has not to be feared, but taken advantage of. His main discontent with USA is it spreading that "plague" around the world. Following, it is CCPs role as "a global messiah" (oh my....) to rectify that, showing world "a different vision of a successful state system."
pytyper2 8y ago
Do you remember the "Don't Be Evil" campaign? Google literally rose to prominence with this as their slogan. I would expect a company whose slogan is "Don't Be Evil" to completely shun a country who wants censored search.
- darepublic 8y ago
  I thought Google performed censorship in North America too. After Trump's election people were crying for more censorship on facebook and Google.
  - pytyper2 8y ago
    I think they censor everywhere to a certain extent, this seems more like a concerted effort along the lines of, "what are we going to allow them to view" and not "should we remove the child porn links and isis videos and pirated movie links now that we know about them"
- gt_ 8y ago
  You would? Google is private company. If you want a powerful entity to live up to your standards, you should look into creating a government. I recommend a democracy; and hold your neighbors accountable for treating it as their own. Together, you can eventually build something to be proud of. It will probably never be perfect, but it will be yours for as long as you take care of it.
  - pytyper2 8y ago
    It was their standard, Eric Schmidt stood on many stages and said the same. Google being a private company has no bearing on my previous comment. Private companies don't have to be amoral. A much more capitalistic move would be to use their information and computation power to devalue the Yuan and acquire large swathes of the now defunct China and rename it Google. Now, not only can you search Google you can go to Google. This would be much more valuable than some pleb ad revenue.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
nailer 8y ago
Why not both? - American companies stop facilitating totalitarian regimes - World governments also prompt totalitarian regimes to move towards democracy
- pravbeatle 8y ago
  That's a naive and simplistic view of the world. I grew up in the Middle East and really believed they needed some democracy. In reality, moving to Democracy would result in more radicalization and instability and not less. Without going into a long rant, there are toxic forces within many countries that would take their country on a profoundly bad route, by any universal standard, if Democracy were forced upon them.
- nailer 8y ago
  I'd like to reply to pravebeatle anyway: I disagree with them, but they're polite and follow the HN guidelines, and their reply doesn't deserve to be flagged. I know what you're saying - there's a lot of instability in the world and sometimes people make very poor choices - but democracy is a way to better handle the turbulence. In essence, it gives us the ability to handle the coup that occurs every few years in unstable environments with less bloodshed - rather than the military taking control and ousting a leader, and a bunch of people dying or being imprisoned, another party takes over at the ballot box. The newly elected ruler might be a really bad choice, but it's the people's perjorative to choose their leaders and it's a much better alternative than another coup.
- gt_ 8y ago
  > Why not both? By definition, “companies” are incentivized to prioritize capital pursuit over moral pursuit. It’s actually the most fundamental part of the whole concept. Many democratic governments in the world, and particularly the most wealthy and powerful ones, are run by people who are (to a large unmeasurable extent) incentivized to do what companies want them to do. This is not a fundamental concept of a democratic government, but as long as the electorate fails to take responsibility for their own government’s behavior, the incentives remain in the company’s favor, which doesn’t make a very good case for democracy. Democracy is a very slippery concept. America, for example, is well understood to not be a democracy, but it’s people seem to have convinced themselves it is. These kinds of miscalculations are really at the root of “why not”.
StreamBright 8y ago
And why should they do that? What was the last time Western interventionism brought any good for the world? Who are the US and EU representing to tell other countries how to live their lives??
- gt_ 8y ago
  Right. If the US is representing anybody, it’s Google. For the Americans who want your government to represent you, you’ve got some work to do. Most Americans I know speak of their government as though it were just some poorly run business that somebody else is responsible for. Get your own house in order before you criticize others peoples’.
  - barnesto 8y ago
    get out of your echo chamber and speak to more Americans
    - ionised 8y ago
      He's on HN. It's an American-centric site.
- sykhic 8y ago
  The Korean War ended up benefitting South Korea in the sense that they didn’t up like North Korea. The free trade agreements have largely been responsible for large numbers of the world's population improving their living standard. There are other examples of intervention being good. Of course there are lots of examples of intervention being bad. There is nothing special about Western intervention vs. intervention by other regional powers. Nations with power rarely use it for the well being of the world. But shouldn’t one strive to have governments do what you consider to be right?
  - knuththetruth 8y ago
    >The Korean War ended up benefitting South Korea in the sense that they didn’t up like North Korea This is an incorrect understanding of Korean history. US anti-communist policy played no small part in creating North Korea in the first place. In the postwar period, US support for the right-wing dictator Syngman Rhee, who murdered tens of thousands of Korean citizens he suspected were his political opponents, empowered and drew popular support to Kim Il-Sung. Sung was further bolstered by the US giving favored status to Japan over Korea, forcing them, for example, to purchase goods and expertise from their brutal, former colonial rulers. With this state of affairs, Sung, a former anti-Japanese resistance fighter, was successful in persuading many that that the US-backed rule of Rhee was just an extension of the pre-War colonial rule, ultimately devolving into the never-ending civil war we have today. This in no way benefitted the south, but instead has been a nearly 70 year long drag on their economy, as well as their development into a liberal democracy (which really didn’t happen until a popular revolt in the 80s because the continued US to provide financing and support to authoritarian rulers in the south).
mtgx 8y ago
> It's not fair to expect a technology company to fight a major world economic power. This is a failure of US and EU governments. Okay, so if the US and EU governments would announce tomorrow that they will start a trade war with China and stop US/EU companies from trading with China unless China immediately stops all censorship/human rights abuses, would Google/other tech companies go along with that, or will they lobby against that move? The tech companies are not as innocent or blameless as you portray them to be.
panarky 8y ago
> It's not fair to expect a technology company to fight a major world economic power Google fights major world powers every day [1, 2]. And Google doesn't have to fight to force the Chinese government to stop censoring their citizens. Google can simply choose not to partner with repressive regimes in enabling and legitimizing censorship and mass surveillance. [1] https://transparencyreport.google.com/user-data/overview https://transparencyreport.google.com/user-data/overview [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/google-encrypts-data-amid-backlash-against-nsa-spying/2013/09/06/9acc3c20-1722-11e3-a2ec-b47e45e6f8ef_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/google-en...
- macspoofing 8y ago
  >Google fights major world powers every day That's right, if by 'fight' you mean following rules laid out in countries that it operates in. If the rules are completely skewed against them (and other foreign companies) as they are in China, they have no recourse other than to appeal to their government to lobby on their behalf. Facebook is in a similar position with respect to Russian interference. The narrative pushed by people like Kara Swisher of Recode is that Facebook should have fought a major world power with limitless resources for cyber attacks and because they didn't they are responsible for the damage, instead of demanding to know why the previous and present American administrations allowed an American company and public be harassed by a belligerent foreign power. >Google can simply choose not to partner with repressive regimes in enabling and legitimizing censorship and mass surveillance. And you can choose not to buy Chinese-made products and thereby no longer support and legitimize a repressive regime ... but hey, here we are.
  - panarky 8y ago
    > following rules laid out in countries that it operates in Exactly my point. Google can choose not to operate in countries where the rules are too egregiously antithetical to their mission. > Facebook should have fought a major world power Facebook is responsible for the damage because Facebook built the tools that enabled bad actors to hack democracies and Facebook profited from it (in the short term). Google is in a similar position. Should they build the tools that enable systematic repression and profit from it? Sure, they can claim they're "only following orders" but when has that ever worked out well?
white-flame 8y ago
The very notion of independent sovereignty of nations means that you can't and shouldn't expect to normalize behavior between countries. If doing business in the USA is free & good, many outsider businesses will do business there as well. If doing business in China is not all free & good, outsider business won't do business there. How much that hurts foreign businesses vs hurts China is up for debate. But governments individually rule what goes on in their borders, and use those rules both for internal ideological pursuit as well as to attract or detract external interest, as is their role. "Fairness" of doing business isn't exactly extreme human rights violations or anything. (Other behaviors are, but not this particular point you're making.)

ForHackernews 8y ago

Are you just asking why anyone should have any ethical standards at all? Presumably even you think there is some line a tech company shouldn't cross, right?

mywacaday 8y ago
Absolutely there are lines companies should not cross but that's what we have laws and policy for. That's why we have GDPR/AML/Anti-Bribery/Anti-Corruption legislation. We all know they are wrong but we still have laws even if some of practices are accepted locally, small bribes etc. Contrived example, if a printing company wanted to expand into China they would not be allowed print anti Chinese government documents. Would we be as up in arms about this or should there be a law saying that until China increases human rightsn EU/US companies can't work there and Chinese companies can't work/sell to EU/US? Obviously this won't/can't happen given our dependence on cheap Chinese manufacturing and our need for year on year growth.
- ForHackernews 8y ago
  So if it's not illegal, in your book, a company should just do it? Let's say Saudi Arabia approaches Facebook and wants access to profile and location data to help round up all the gay people in the country to be executed. Maybe they even offer to pay a lot of money, so it'll be profitable. That's fine with you? Those local laws, amirite?
simias 8y ago
You mean like "do no evil"? I have absolutely no faith at all that any large company can really stick to some moral compass. Eventually money corrupts all. Any individual morality and sense of responsibility gets diluted to the point where it disappears completely. I mean, let's take your reasoning to its logical conclusion: I think most would agree that not paying taxes isn't very ethical, does it mean that we shouldn't have any laws and regulations and controlling bodies surrounding these topics because it's a line "a tech company shouldn't cross"? If you don't put a cop on the line and there's money on the other side I can assure you that it will be crossed. Raising outrage at the company is not an effective way to enforce the law (although it can work at times).

throw_way8882 8y ago

eh.... I think I agree in principle with you, BUT something doesn't sit quite right. I'm currently in China (hence the throwaway account) and I think any level of collaboration with their government on restricting access to free information for the Chinese people should ABSOLUTELY BE CHALLENGED. Not doing so prolongs their government's ability to not reform vs getting caught in middle-income trap from lack of 0 to 1 innovation.

simias 8y ago
>I think any level of collaboration with their government on restricting access to free information for the Chinese people should ABSOLUTELY BE CHALLENGED I don't think that's the parent point, it's more that if you do consider that doing business with the Chinese state is unethical then it makes more sense to push for regulation rather than expect big multinational companies to Do The Right Thing. Right now it seems that we're in a race to the bottom and the Chinese government is making the rules.
- mocae 8y ago
  > it makes more sense to push for regulation rather than expect big multinational companies to Do The Right Thing How does it make more sense? You can't influence foreign policy of your government and you won't find a party with such specific topics which is also powerful enough to actually accomplish something. With a company like google you can create a shitstorm that will cost them. You can break a companies reputation with a hand full influencers those days. PS. a company is not a robot (we'd even expect ethics from them). It consists of humans and we should expect acting ethical from a human. They don't get a license to kill the moment they enter their office.
mywacaday 8y ago
This is the key comment for me. A person in China has an opinion that does not agree with the government and feels so threatened voicing an opinion that would't merit a second thought in the EU/US that they have to go anonymous. How can we be comfortable with google or any company going to China and effectively saying yup, thats ok.

mocae 8y ago

"Don't be evil" if you marketed yourself in such a way, you shouldn't be surprised if the general public applies different standards to you.

mywacaday 8y ago
When I read that line I though it read for a second "Don't be evil ;-)"

deleted 8y ago

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tssva 8y ago

Almost all countries require compliance with some level of government mandated censorship. Why is China being singled out? Many western and middle eastern countries that tech companies operate in today have severe censorship and monitoring requirements. Some of these countries with have similar or worse human rights records. You hear very little if any uproar about it.

394549 8y ago
> Almost all countries require compliance with some level of government mandated censorship. Why is China being singled out? Because the purpose and intent of the censorship matters. China's censorship is about suppressing dissent against a human-rights violating authoritarian regime. Western censorship is about suppressing harmful crimes like child abuse and sometimes intellectual property violations. Those goals are not comparable. Also, China is massively powerful and influential. Many of the countries with similarly strict censorship regimes are so small and weak that they'll never attract the same kind of attention.

astronautjones 8y ago

> Why should there be a different standard for Google and other tech companies to not expand into China. If we have a problem with how their government works policy should be applied that prevents/manages how businesses subject to our laws operate abroad. they set that standard for themselves...

alexandercrohde 8y ago

No. - Most people care a lot how corporations behave. Many corporations have a very, very bad reputation and it affects their business. E.G: I know more than one person who deleted their facebook. - Google got its popularity by indicating it was not a standard corporation ("Don't be evil" and acting on it). Google is free to sell that away, but if it does it loses a hard-to-quantify place in our idealistic hearts. - Maybe you're right, maybe we should hold other tech companies to a higher standard too. - The US Gov has no effective means to change the structure of China's government. It also cares more about trade and stability than the freedom of China's population.

esquivalience 8y ago
That's a straw man which conflates Google with the regulations it is proposing to follow. Google wants to do business in China; and it does so by obeying Chinese regulations. It obeys the law. End of story. If you want to change it, lobby the PRC.
- ohyes 8y ago
  No it doesn't. The regulations in China are immoral. Obeying immoral laws is also immoral. (If the law says 'gas the [ethnic group]' it is still wrong to do it). If Google must follow immoral laws to operate in China, they should not operate in China. I don't have any pull with the PRC but I can boycott Google.
  - gt_ 8y ago
    It sounds like you might be missing a few things. Private companies are, by definition, private entities responsible for prioritizing whatever and however they choose. If you want to have input in a powerful entity, I really recommend starting a government. If you have an old one layout around, maybe dust if off and use that, but it’ll probably take some work. I don’t know where you live, but in the US, there’s a bunch of people who are interested in reviving their government entity. They can’t do it alone, though. Here’s the website: https://www.dsausa.org https://www.dsausa.org

rdlecler1 8y ago

Wrong. If China becomes a big business unit for Google then China can use that leverage to start influencing Google’s international operations. We already see China doing this with other companies.

cryoshon 8y ago

>Why should there be a different standard for Google and other tech companies to not expand into China there is no different standard. it is unethical to aid totalitarian states in their oppression of their people. that standard is crystal clear, and google is on the wrong side of it. waffling regarding corporate responsibility is irrelevant because the question of whether the actor is a corporation or not has nothing to do with the standard itself. once again: the moral issue is very clear on what is acceptable and what is not acceptable. selling widgets to the chinese is not in violation of that standard. offering a product that is neutered so as to be a tool of oppression is in clear violation of the standard. the question of china using these tools to oppress their population is not up for debate. china is a police state. for ethnic minorities like the uighurs, the falun gong, the chinese muslims, etc, that police state is operationalized to eradicate and prevent any presence in society. this is not right. it is not right to help the chinese state keep groups of people subjugated and starving. the apologists should be ashamed. google should be ashamed. google employees should be ashamed, and outraged.

deleted 8y ago

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panarky 8y ago

> Why should there be a different standard for Google Because Google "is not a conventional company" [1]. A tired trope on HN is that corporations cannot and should not be ethical entities. They are legally mandated to maximize shareholder value, and this usually requires taking actions that people find morally repugnant. This is a myth and it is horseshit. Google's mission is to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful" [2]. Larry and Sergey knew that realizing its mission requires a long-term focus and a moral center that is unusual for modern corporations. The public must trust Google to do the right thing even when it's not in Google's short-term interest. Organic search results skewed by ad payments or censorship is antithetical to Google's mission. Of course they could make huge short-term profits by compromising the quality and completeness of information, but they've wisely fought against this from the beginning. This is a rational strategy to maximize the long-term value of the company, and it's worked incredibly well [3]. It would be a crying shame to stop now. [1] https://abc.xyz/investor/founders-letters/2004/ipo-letter.html https://abc.xyz/investor/founders-letters/2004/ipo-letter.ht... [2] https://www.google.com/about/our-company/ https://www.google.com/about/our-company/ [3] https://imgur.com/a/LfuM4eQ https://imgur.com/a/LfuM4eQ

yoran 8y ago
From an outsider perspective who does not know much about what has or is going on at Google, I was always under the impression that Sergey was the main "don't be evil" guy. Could this development be a sign that some of the power of the founders is diminishing within Google and has transferred to e.g. major shareholders?
mywacaday 8y ago
Maybe I worded it badly, I meant why should manufacturing companies be allowed into china with no fanfare but google be ostracized for doing the same. If what they are doing is legal so be it, what we want to be legal is the real question. Should we be doing business with countries that don't have the same beliefs that we do? The other side is that encouraging companies like google into China could help in the long run.
kalleboo 8y ago
> This is a myth and it is horseshit. Exactly. As for an example of a company showing some backbone... https://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/tim-cook-soundly-rejects-politics-of-the-ncppr-suggests-group-sell-apples-s https://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/tim-cook-soundly-rej...: "When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind," he said, "I don't consider the bloody ROI." He said that the same thing about environmental issues, worker safety, and other areas where Apple is a leader. He didn't stop there, however, as he looked directly at the NCPPR representative and said, "If you want me to do things only for ROI reasons, you should get out of this stock." (of course, Apple does do business in China and practices app censorship there, so...)

iamshs 8y ago

Because it will degrade democracy in countries like India. They will implement this censored version in a jiff. Government rules and laws can always change, this project means they will never change towards the better and not allow people to rake in the freedom that democracy implements. This project is certain to weaken democracy all around.

tanilama 8y ago

That US excetioptonalism should be put into bed, better for good. With all that happens in US, why would any American companies would assume they still have a moral high ground to demand things?

smsm42 8y ago

> The majority of people don't really care how corporations behave. This is not true, people care, but not enough to make them stay away from Google. Violating privacy is not that high on most people's mind. If we knew, for example, that Google search engine uses child slave labour, a lot of people would stay away from it. But if it's just remembers what you searched for, most people kinda care, but not enough to inconvenience themselves by using something else. It's not binary, it's a spectrum. And new developments move people's opinions along this spectrum.

sdkaufman 8y ago

Exactly - Microsoft (Bing, Office 365, Hotmail, OneDrive etc) has been operating in China forever, and Bing cooperates with state censorship just as you'd expect. But the minute Google does the same thing, everyone loses their minds. Is this because of expectations (i.e. no one expected MS to hold the moral high ground, but Google was famous for its "Do no evil" mantra)? In which case, well, maybe Google's branding backfired in this case :-/

ehsankia 8y ago
Don't forget Apple, and they do far worse: https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/17/apples-icloud-user-data-in-china-is-now-handled-by-a-state-owned-mobile-operator/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/17/apples-icloud-user-data-in...