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Google Employees Uncover Ongoing Work on Censored China Search

557 points by jbegley 8y ago

talko 8y ago
Reuters said that google employees have also signed a letter protesting the company’s building of a censored search engine for China
kpmcc 8y ago
Seems more like a hydra than a Dragonfly at this point.
robbrit 8y ago
I think what will end up happening is Google employees will just self-sort until there aren't enough people left in the company to oppose projects like this. People who are strongly opposed on moral grounds will leave, further strengthening management's choices. While Google is probably sad to see them go, it would be even sadder to continue missing out on the world's largest market. I doubt the employee protests will win out here in the long run.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- yorwba 8y ago
  For that reason, Googlers who oppose these kinds of projects should enthusiastically sign up to work on them, so they can have a chance at influencing the outcome. It may feel like the morally superior choice to avoid getting involved, but it just means that the dirty work is done by someone who doesn't care. For the same reason, I don't think creating a censored search engine for the Chinese market is bad in itself. If you accept that the Chinese government isn't going to change its mind on censorship any time soon, you can still try to do your best within that constraint, e.g. by finding a site with the censored content that's not on the blacklist yet.
  - fucking_tragedy 8y ago
    This is blind optimism in the face of hard facts. If Google wants to play in China, they will have to bend to the whims of the CCP. No amount of employee foot-dragging will change that fact. > For the same reason, I don't think creating a censored search engine for the Chinese market is bad in itself. This is one the arguments that got trotted out by Google employees last time Dragonfly made headlines. The CCP is putting people in concentration camps[1]. Dragonfly would help them do that better. [1] https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/muslims-camps-china/ https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/muslims-...
    - yorwba 8y ago
      They will have to bend, no doubt, but if they bend even slightly less than everyone else, that's still a win.
      - fucking_tragedy 8y ago
        No, it's not. "Everyone else is doing it" is not an excuse to help put people in camps.
        yorwba 8y ago
        It is if you doing it puts fewer people in camps than the alternative.
        fucking_tragedy 8y ago
        The entire point of entering the Chinese market is to make money. Google will make more money doing what the CCP asks well and without question. Putting less people in camps and playing games with the CCP means less money or even losing the Chinese market.
        ionised 8y ago
        Which will never be how it works. You think the Chinese government will accept Google deliberately making it more difficult for them to surveill and imprison dissidents? You're out of your mind if you believe they would allow this in any way. They would sooner turf Google out on its arse than tolerate any interference. The Chinese government WANTS Google. Think about why that is.
- ApolloFortyNine 8y ago
  >While Google is probably sad to see them go, it would be even sadder to continue missing out on the world's largest market. Honestly what I see happening, if Google isn't allowed to position themselves for a rentry into China, is Baidu eventually making an international debut. They have been developing an entire google-esque eco system in a bubble for years now. If Google was there, they wouldn't have such a strangle hold there, and wouldn't become an international threat.
  - fucking_tragedy 8y ago
    Why would the CCP allow a foreign company to outcompete one of their own homegrown darlings?
    - RandomInteger4 8y ago
      What would it matter if Google is operating within the parameters of the government's censorship rules and generating tax revenue for the government?
      - fucking_tragedy 8y ago
        You're asking this question in an era where we've gotten into a trade war with China? Because the CCP and its members are heavily invested in quite literally everything that isn't a foreignly owned business operating in China.
        throwaway2048 8y ago
        they are invested in those too (mandatory Chinese partners with 51% control, with mandatory IP transfers)
      - pertymcpert 8y ago
        It matters a great deal indeed.
- omouse 8y ago
  > further strengthening management's choices I think people are forgetting that each of those Google (former) employees have shares and are also shareholders and shareholders will start to get pissed when management is screwing up and will call for a new CEO or new execs or a new board to be put into place that will get Google back on track: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/16/technology/tech-workers-company-stock-shareholder-activism.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/16/technology/tech-workers-c... > I doubt the employee protests will win out here in the long run. If they lose more employees it can be argued that they're ignoring their fiduciary duty to the shareholders by tarnishing the brand of Google which makes hiring more difficult which leads to less profits. There's already activist shareholders asking for more gender diversity data for example: https://www.fastcompany.com/40474369/activist-investor-demands-that-google-provide-more-data-on-its-gender-pay-gap https://www.fastcompany.com/40474369/activist-investor-deman...
  - robbrit 8y ago
    > each of those Google (former) employees have shares They have class C shares, which do not have any voting rights. Shareholders without voting rights have absolutely no power to influence policy. > If they lose more employees it can be argued that they're ignoring their fiduciary duty to the shareholders by tarnishing the brand of Google which makes hiring more difficult which leads to less profits. You're making a lot of jumps of logic here so I'll split things up: > If they lose more employees They're not bleeding employees so quickly that it will cause a problem, the overwhelming majority of Googlers will not leave over this. There's just a few of them, enough to make headlines but not enough to cause any real issue. > tarnishing the brand of Google They'd have to tarnish it a lot to get people to stop wanting to work for Google. Even with the latest headlines and controversies, it's still one of the best paying companies out there with awesome benefits, interesting work, and prestigious status. Even employees who are uncomfortable with some of the choices the company is making will think twice before giving all that up. > which leads to less profits In the long run this might be true. I'll use the counter-example of Microsoft though: they were the demon for decades and are still one of the most valuable companies in the world. If a tarnished brand for employees guaranteed less profits, they would have died a long time ago.
- ionised 8y ago
  > it would be even sadder to continue missing out on the world's largest market. Is that sad though? Really? I'm not exactly tearing up at the thought.
rodneyzeng 8y ago
This means Google has not realized the situation when the bottom line of Chinese government is touched. They will learn this lesson from China.
contingencies 8y ago
Objective observation: What do you call censorship in other countries? Legal obligations. What is the algorithmic effect of pushing something below the first fold? The same, but global. It is nonsensical to be outraged at one and calm regarding the other. The system powering the other has always been closed, deniable, safely distant from a legal perspective... and wields far more power globally than any government, answering to nobody. Here in China, Baidu really is terrible ... a censored Google would be useful, but one may argue it sets a poor precedent. Unfortunately, AFAIK national censorship rules are an existing feature of all major search engines...
ProAm 8y ago
Why would they? Google fears China is going to create their own version of Google and will lose access to the country and possibly more of Asia. They are going to try very hard to keep their foot in the door there.
- topspin 8y ago
  > Why would they? Morals, perhaps.
  - ProAm 8y ago
    Money will always trump morals with companies. It's not ideal but the truth.
    - abakker 8y ago
      If corporations are people, then laws are corporation's moral compass. The solution would likely be to produce regulations to provide a moral compass to corporations so that they are required to exhibit the behavior we would like them to have. Corporations are legal automatons, and need to be treated as such. This doesn't necessarily mean we need more rules - we could easily improve regulation by creating rules with fewer, broader commands. Certainly, this would create some inefficiency, but it would be inefficiency on the commercial side, rather than the legislative one. (i.e. simpler, broader laws make certain commercial activities illegal when there might be nuanced reasons that they should be allowed, vs detailed and exhaustive regulations create more corporate opportunity but also more loopholes and regulatory surface area.)
      - nostrademons 8y ago
        This is pretty challenging for a multinational corporation operating in a globalized world. The issue here is that Google is trying to produce a product that conforms to Chinese laws for doing business in China. These laws are deeply offensive and immoral to many people in Google's largely-American workforce. Trying to create a moral compass that multinational corporations can live by requires creating laws that apply to everyone on earth. Personally, I think that's a great idea. Then the hard work is in finding a set of global laws that everyone can agree on, and that's the sticking point, because peoples' moral sensibilities on earth are largely contradictory. Americans would be quick to say "Well, we should all operate under democracy - let the people decide what these laws should be", not realizing that if we actually did world democracy 1-person-1-vote style, the legal framework they would live under would likely be some weird amalgamation of the Chinese & Indian political systems, because close to 50% of the population lives in those countries. America would get about 5% of the vote, so it's a good bet that our wishes would be ignored. Personally, though I love the idea of world government in theory, I didn't sign up for those conditions. Given the general resistance to globalization by populist bodies in basically every nation on earth, most other people didn't either.
whoisjuan 8y ago
I find kind of hypocrite to reject the idea of a company working in a product that serves the Chinese market (which, btw, is ultra protectionist), while actively consuming goods that are manufactured in China. I'm not saying that people don't have the right to morally object something like this project, but it's kind of baffling that many are loudly voicing their concerns and demonizing any company that is attempting to do something in China, while looking the other way when tweeting from their Chinese made iPhones, and writing dissenting articles in their Chinese made computers. People should try to find better ways to calibrate their moral compass and focus their activism into more important and threatening issues. There are liberties that are being violated right here, right now. If you think you can't work at Google because they are building a product for China, it would be pretty hard to work for any company in America, given how everything in this country is piggybacked on Chinese made goods.
- mc32 8y ago
  Moreover we’re all consuming censored results. One is more heavy handed than the other, but we’re all consuming curated results, to one extent or another.
- karim 8y ago
  > I'm not saying that people don't have the right to morally object something like this project, but it's kind of baffling that many are loudly voice their concerns while looking the other way when tweet from their Chinese made iPhones, and write dissenting articles in their Chinese made computers. I don't get it — following your logic people shouldn't be protesting anything China-related because they're using chinese goods? I mean, this isn't a binary issue — you can buy chinese computers because most computers are made there and regret that Google is building a search engine to censor political queries.
  - whoisjuan 8y ago
    I agree with you. My comment is about those who put these issues at the center of high-profile debates and seem to demonize individuals and organizations without looking at how their actions contribute to the issue. By no means, I'm trying to say that you can't regret an issue without indirectly being part of a system that aggravates the same issue. I think nobody can escape this. But it's different when you want to raise someone or something to a certain moral standard without understanding how fungible is that particular moral standard. Sometimes people are just wasting their energy on things that are only an issue by their standards and not by the standards of the people who are ultimately affected by the issue itself (in this case the Chinese people). I would like to see Google employees object with the same energy, things like Google unhinged data collection practices.
o10449366 8y ago
Google execs know that as long as they have the best benefits in the industry and keep their workers cushy they'll also have complete control over them. This is because when you're at the top of the food chain, very few people are actually willing to put their money where their mouth is and take meaningful action. It's deliciously hypocritical to see Google workers here (and HN posters in general) lament Facebook workers for being morally corrupt when they continue to enable and find excuses for Google and are guilty of the same thing. Google will move forward with expansion into China. Anyone who doesn't believe that is frankly naive. The further censorship of the Chinese populace will be 100% in the name of greed and profit. But why should Googlers care? After all, those free meals, pools, video game rooms, and gyms aren't going to pay for themselves.
- math_and_stuff 8y ago
  Pushback from employees, human rights groups, and congress has already significantly set back the project. The fight has to continue, but I don't understand your defeatism. Source: I publicly resigned from Google over dragonfly and dedicated months of my life and income to fighting it.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - jimmy1 8y ago
    > but I don't understand your defeatism. > I publicly resigned from Google Because for every one that resigned, there are most likely hundreds that stay. I do admire your courage and willing to take a stand. In the face of an oppressive government like China I hope I would have the courage to do the same.
    - MRD85 8y ago
      And tons that will be willing to replace them.
      - 8y ago
supernova87a 8y ago
Google invited these long-term problems onto itself (and so did many other startups) by marketing a culture aside from their technology that got people to join them. "Do good" they said, which invited people to judge them and decide to work there based on whether they continued doing good. Compare to other companies that were not so "hot" that just promised some less fulfilling employment, but no strong moral or global cause. Now it has come back to bite them in an employee culture that feels the need to talk about politics at work, invite college-level-immature debate in internal forums, redirect the business with non-business-related concerns -- especially chasing each year's latest fad of social concern. They now feel the pressure to become a more grown up company, one that has to stomach having customers who hold the same ideals as they do. But every business has to blind itself sometimes to customers who use your product in ways you didn't intend or choose to. That's the cost of being a public company. I'm exhausted even just watching Google have to tune its morals for the new political flavor of each season. I say, all for the better, for it to act like a normal business.
- geofft 8y ago
  A counterpoint: Google believed they could attract better engineers (which can be explained either as genuinely more skilled people, who have more ability to choose where they work, or simply more passionate people) with the "Don't be evil" policy. Oracle existed all along. Google wanted to not be Oracle. Now, Google has decided they want contracts like they're Oracle and they want staff like they're not Oracle. They can't have it both ways. It's not so much that Oracle is a more grown-up company because it learned to pursue profits and not good - it's just that it's easier to survive that way. (Hence the appearance that Oracle is a "normal" business; it's an easier way to run a business, is all, so more businesses do that.) Nobody forced Google to be a public company. Nobody forced Google to grow as big as it did. Nobody forced Google to talk to China. They brought this on themselves, and they should have known that they couldn't do this and still remain Google.
  - scarmig 8y ago
    > Nobody forced Google to be a public company This is the relevant part. As soon as you're public, it inevitably introduces strong pressures to pursue profit no matter its cost, as it decouples the negative social externalities corporate actions can cause from the profit made from those actions.
est 8y ago
AdSense China grew 60% last year. Yeah Google is making a profit in China. which need some kind of tool to support it. Maybe harvest list of content you are not allowed to advertise with?
- cromwellian 8y ago
  AFAIK, That's Chinese companies using AdSense to advertise in Western markets, it's not "AdSense in China". I've never seen a single Chinese website using AdSense.
  - est 8y ago
    Maybe the "Chinese-feeling-friendly" ads is a growing requirement in Western markets. No chinese wish to see their country is a shithole from AdSense.
CKN23-ARIN 8y ago
If Google didn't use a monorepo, it would have been much harder for these employees to keep tabs on Dragonfly-related code.
- ehsankia 8y ago
  I personally find it a bit suspicious that every single piece of information we have on Dragonfly has come from The Intercept, which probably got it all from a single source. And yet everyone in these threads take all this info as fact. Clearly if it was so open, we'd have a lot more sources here. I also don't feel right making judgement on a project when I've only heard one side of the story, from a source which is clearly biased against it.
  - 0xfffafaCrash 8y ago
    The Intercept is an obvious choice to leak this sort of information, especially given their reputation for having the backs of their sources (with one notable failure -- the NSA leak where they published raw documents leading inadvertently to an identification of the source due to printer stenography) and focus on tech/surveillance issues. The previous stories re: Dragonfly were widely corroborated by many involved at Google since the story broke and reputable sources like the NYT had significant corroborating coverage. I don't see why it's suspicious or indicative that it's coming from a single source just because the Intercept is breaking more of these stories. Anyone familiar with what's been leaked and any interest in publishing an update on this story would have little reason to send it elsewhere instead.
- alkibiades 8y ago
  their open source projects (chrome etc) aren't in the mono repo and highly doubt dragonfly is
lnyng 8y ago
While it seems like people don't like the idea of this censored search engine called Dragonfly, I wonder what people think about Microsoft's Bing. Bing is definitely running a censored version in China, or it will not survive the government regulation. Is Bing less bad than Dragonfly in terms of censorship? or is it also bad but engineers in Microsoft care little about that?
- perfmode 8y ago
  Google is the one that matters. Priorities. Given infinite time and resources, by all means: pursue infinite objectives. Given finite resources, sort in impact-priority order. search engines aren’t like weeds
snek 8y ago
I miss Larry :(
appsonify 8y ago
I don't get the pushback....you signed up to work for a for-profit publicly traded corporation. You received your benefits and compensation. Now suddenly, you have a problem with your employer trying to do its job which is continue to please wall street that impacts the share price? it's kinda like that pushback from MS that was puzzling too....whether you like it or not, the very work you are doing in university to where you end up workiung, directly or indirectly contributes to somebody on the other side of the planet not having the things you have so you can keep the stuff you have.... the entitlement, and the blatant ignorance is just mind boggling...where does this mentality come from? This type of shit is now encroaching even video games... in Battlefield V, the game has been completely neutered of its historic accuracy....Redheaded cutie with a robot arm in WW2?
- MereInterest 8y ago
  People often have some amount of morals that go into which job they have. This typically plays into the choice of jobs. Taking a job that has military contracts is a moral stance, as is taking a job that does not. Taking a job that supports dictatorships is a moral stance, as is taking a job that does not. When a company changes their moral stances, this acts against the previous choices of the employees who work there. Of course it is reasonable to protest these changes. Corporations are composed of people. To imply that this relieves people of any moral responsibility for the actions of corporations is absurd.
  - appsonify 8y ago
    Corporations are made up of people but the corporation itself is NOT the sum of its people, it is its own entity, hell US corporations have the same human rights and social number. The difference is a corporation is void of moral conscience, so you can't really expect to bring your own Judeo-Christian ethics here
    - MereInterest 8y ago
      I agree that corporations are not just the sum of its parts. It is entirely valid to model a corporation as an artificial intelligence that happens to use human brains as hardware. Taking a job at a corporation can then be seen either as joining it, or as interacting with it. If one is joining a corporation, the individual's choices are part of the AI that drives the corporation. In this case, it is essential for individuals to act morally, in order to predispose the corporation to act morally. If one is interacting with a corporation, there is no expectation that it will behave morally. Therefore, to increase the likelihood that it will perform moral actions, it should be painful for the corporation to perform immoral actions. That punishment can be inflicted by bringing negative PR, by negotiating contracts that avoid immoral actions, or by quitting and thereby forcing the company to pay higher wages to attract the same talent.
g9yuayon 8y ago
Just because you don't like be censored, you'd rather deprive every Chinese's access to information of much much better quality. Yes, a few percent of searches will be censored, but the other 90+% of them are still miles better than Baidu's. Yet the righteous Google employees rather let people die of misinformation provided by Baidu(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Wei_Zexi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Wei_Zexi). They'd rather see event like this happen everyday in China: https://www.ft.com/content/9be0b974-10e9-11e6-bb40-c30e3bfcf63b https://www.ft.com/content/9be0b974-10e9-11e6-bb40-c30e3bfcf.... They'd rather let ordinary people comb through pages of thinly disguised ads to get to truly useful pages. They'd rather let good people be bombarded with false information by Baidu. They'd rather deny billions of people's access to vast number of educational videos on Youtube. Yeah, right, this is some people's version of justice. Yup, political ideal certainly is more important than the quality life of billions of real, ordinary people. What a bunch of hypocrites.
- curt15 8y ago
  >but the other 90+% of them are still miles better than Baidu's And you know this how, given that google hasn't operated in china for the last ten years?
  - g9yuayon 8y ago
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/10/16/google-really-is-trying-build-censored-chinese-search-engine-its-ceo-confirms/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.cab0c09d7760 https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/10/16/google-... Okay, let's say you don't trust Google's number, then think about this: how many web pages are about politics that are sensitive to Chinese government, and how many web pages are about our everyday life? Edit: oh you mean quality of Google search compared with Baidu's? Well, for one, Google does not use paid listing, and there are numerous reports that compare Google and Baidu's search quality.
- jonathanyc 8y ago
  Wow, this is the most insane argument I have ever heard for censored search by Google in China. Arguing that Google search is some moral good that Google has a moral obligation to bestow upon the Chinese people lest their “quality life [sic]” suffer is the most laughable claim I have heard this year. It is reasonable to argue that Google either should or shouldn’t respect Chinese laws in this area. Your line of reasoning is just way off the mark.
mruts 8y ago
I don’t think I would want to develop a censored search engine (though I’d certainly reconsider for enough money), nor do I think it’s “right” (whatever that means), but I still think that in the intetests of its shareholders, it has a moral and fiscal obligation to make as much money as possible, in perpuitity. I think this implies that Google should go into China. It’s unlikely that Google would make less net profit after entering China, the blowback isn’t impacting financials, and therefore, it’s probably the right decision to move into China. Personally, I think censorship (all censorship, not just political) is wrong, but if I was the CEO of Google I would be forced to either resign or go into China. And since I follow the money, I probably wouldn’t resign.
- ionised 8y ago
  > it has a moral and fiscal obligation to make as much money as possible, in perpuitity. This is simply untrue. Also a 'moral obligation to make as much money as possible' is fucking hilarious.
  - mruts 8y ago
    How’s that? And what is untrue about the obligations to its shareholders? Not maximizing shareholder value is illegal.
    - CharlesColeman 8y ago
      > How’s that? Someone already explained much of it to you 13 hours ago, in a reply to another comment of yours expressing the similar ideas: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19308149 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19308149
geuszb 8y ago
> [Sundar Pichai views] the censorship as a worthwhile trade-off to gain access to the country’s more than 800 million internet users Citation needed. Alternatively, Google's mission of "organizing the world's information" isn't quite complete if it continues not serving China. Alternatively still, the real danger is not lost opportunity, but the emergence of a strong Chinese ecosystem (from network equipment all the way up to search and apps) that will steamroll Google's current Android-based hold onto the developing world. Which would you rather believe, the CEO as a sellout who would do anything for a buck, or as a purist on a principled quest to be as useful as possible to mankind, or as a strategic leader aware of the risk of letting competition grow unchallenged? Believe what you want about it, but neither is "news", just opinion.
- throwaway6834 8y ago
  Sundar has as much vision as a blindfolded mole. He is after the money, plain and simple. Source: work at google, for ~8 years
  - crakenzak 8y ago
    Elaborate? He's shown to be a solid leader with the consistent investments into AI and other products etc...
  - elchupanebre 8y ago
    Second that. I worked for 5 years there including directly with Sengupta (in charge of Dragonfly) and in passing with Pichai. Pichai was a politician who saw his mission in finding a balance between power groups, nothing more.
fabianhjr 8y ago
> We think we have an open society because we can criticize our government, but the company we work for has far more impact on our lives, and if you criticize them publicly they will fire you. The private sphere is still run like a dictatorship, by thousands of petty tyrants. Source: https://twitter.com/existentialcoms/status/1051547413083652096 https://twitter.com/existentialcoms/status/10515474130836520... In this particular case, Google and other top tech companies tend not to fire employees for being too critical but still lack any sort of democratic control by their stakeholders (workers, community, etc). More on the matter: < https://newsyndicalist.org/2017/09/30/union-cooperative-strategy-david-oconnell/ https://newsyndicalist.org/2017/09/30/union-cooperative-stra... >
KorematsuFred 8y ago
G! employees opposition to Dragonfly is nothing but veiled colonial white man's burden idea rebooted. For most westerners the notion that other countries might have different systems, different values and yet not be savages or evil is hard to digest. The same individuals would happily bend over and grease up when EU comes with idiotic Quxotian regulations, or when Congress passes stupid bills but somehow the idea that Google should comply with Chinese laws is unfathomable to these silicon valley hippies. There is no need for China to uphold any American values including free speech and yet be a happy prospering society. Chinese people will figure out how to maximize their happiness in due course of time. Meanwhile Google can either make profit from world's largest market or end up at the bottom of heap of virtue signaling companies.
- C1sc0cat 8y ago
  So your saying Racism Human rights abuses are ok if your not white - is that not racist in its self. You cant rightly criticise the "west" for colonial abuses and then turn round and say oh but when we do it its different.
- kkarakk 8y ago
  My one month old account friend, using logical fallacies isn't going to convert anyone to your cause. whataboutisms, blaming cultural insensitivity etc DOES NOT WORK for a country that blatantly tells it's citizens "either support the party line or die" like china.
echan00 8y ago
Maybe this isn't what people want to hear, but there is no reason why Google should not work on some version of their search for China. Google is a huge company (one of the biggest in the world), and they need to diversify their risk by having such an endeavor in their pocket. It DOES NOT mean they need to release it, and it does not mean that even if they do, the version will look like the one they are working on right now.
testcross 8y ago
I wonder how people working for the dragonfly project are feeling. It looks like the rest of the company hate what they are doing. But if they support censorship, they might not care what other people are thinking.
- olalonde 8y ago
  A lot of people support the dragonfly project, you just don't hear about them on HN (namely, almost every Chinese people I've talked to).
snazzycalynx 8y ago
Did the Author ever determine if the source images came from Drone-based WAMI or Satellite-based WAMI as originally reported? The original article in the intercept noted that the Google e-mails they had obtained showed that it was Satellite-based WAMI - which would sort of be a big deal..... AKA - who needs solar powered High Altitude Long Endurance (HALE) drone planes, blimps or aerostats to deploy Wide Area Persistent Surveillance when you can just put WAMI on Micro-sats that never come down and never blink?
sevilo 8y ago
What a joke, Google as a company (and its employees) are massive hypocrites who criticizes China for its censorship and silencing speeches and free thoughts, then they themselves silence and punish employees for not aligning with THEIR opinion and political views on things. Let's not forget the time Google fired the employee for having a different view on diversity.
hrdwdmrbl 8y ago
Love it when Americans make decisions for Chinese people and presume to know what they'd want. Maybe try asking them what they want. Or even just think about what you'd want if you lived in China. Living in China, you know your search engine will be censored. But still, wouldn't you want the best censored search engine that you can get?
- hrdwdmrbl 8y ago
  I should note that I myself am not Chinese either, but I do live there and its not pleasant having to use Bing, etc.
  - chopin 8y ago
    Out of curiosity: Does Startpage work there?
    - hrdwdmrbl 8y ago
      nope, just tried it
- ppseafield 8y ago
  > Love it when Americans make decisions for Chinese people and presume to know what they'd want. This is a discussion about Google (an American company) employees talking about one of Google's projects (as directed by the American company's leadership), but it happens to be about a product for another country. > Living in China, you know your search engine will be censored. But still, wouldn't you want the best censored search engine that you can get? As many folks in China use VPNs to get around the Great Firewall, it seems like they would like an uncensored internet.
  - hrdwdmrbl 8y ago
    Oh certainly I think they're like an uncensored internet but unfortunately Google is not going to cause that to happen. Even with an uncensored Google you still wouldn't be able to access the links. It should also be said that while many Chinese do have VPN they are often pretty bad (SLOW!) and often break. They are also only used by more sophisticated users or enthusiastic users. Most people are too lazy to bother, cost is a consideration or they are not technical enough. I do give shout-out to Google for Outline VPN though. That is them actually doing something that is changing the game
jaimex2 8y ago
Eh, if they ever release it we know Google being Google will just shut it down a few years later like every other new Google product they have released.
Chico11Kidlet 8y ago
Did the Author ever determine if the source images came from Drone-based WAMI or Satellite-based WAMI as originally reported? The original article in the intercept noted that the Google e-mails they had obtained showed that it was Satellite-based WAMI - which would sort of be a big deal..... AKA - who needs solar powered High Altitude Long Endurance (HALE) drone planes, blimps or aerostats to deploy Wide Area Persistent Surveillance when you can just put WAMI on Micro-sats that never come down and never blink?
zachguo 8y ago
Dragonfly will fail anyway even if it enters China. Google won't be allowed to do any social, payment or map related business. By offering a search product alone, there's no way Dragonfly can compete with existing eco-system, at best, it can only achieve a market share as much as DuckDuckGo obtained in US. And internet landscape in China is way more mobile-centric, and iterates faster than US already. Not sure how a crippled Google can fit in. It makes more sense for Google to focus more on GCP in China. No need to deal with all those political stuff.
savgeborn 8y ago
I don't even care what other Googlers are doing but it's the best time to deliver performance when Google is in turnmoil, I'll be securing trust of stakeholders and promotion. I'll work overtime and crank more code, while others try to debate their moral stance Always think about how you can benefit from a particular scenario

557 points by jbegley 8y ago

Reuters said that google employees have also signed a letter protesting the company’s building of a censored search engine for China

kpmcc 8y ago

Seems more like a hydra than a Dragonfly at this point.

robbrit 8y ago

I think what will end up happening is Google employees will just self-sort until there aren't enough people left in the company to oppose projects like this. People who are strongly opposed on moral grounds will leave, further strengthening management's choices. While Google is probably sad to see them go, it would be even sadder to continue missing out on the world's largest market. I doubt the employee protests will win out here in the long run.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
yorwba 8y ago
For that reason, Googlers who oppose these kinds of projects should enthusiastically sign up to work on them, so they can have a chance at influencing the outcome. It may feel like the morally superior choice to avoid getting involved, but it just means that the dirty work is done by someone who doesn't care. For the same reason, I don't think creating a censored search engine for the Chinese market is bad in itself. If you accept that the Chinese government isn't going to change its mind on censorship any time soon, you can still try to do your best within that constraint, e.g. by finding a site with the censored content that's not on the blacklist yet.
- fucking_tragedy 8y ago
  This is blind optimism in the face of hard facts. If Google wants to play in China, they will have to bend to the whims of the CCP. No amount of employee foot-dragging will change that fact. > For the same reason, I don't think creating a censored search engine for the Chinese market is bad in itself. This is one the arguments that got trotted out by Google employees last time Dragonfly made headlines. The CCP is putting people in concentration camps[1]. Dragonfly would help them do that better. [1] https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/muslims-camps-china/ https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/muslims-...
  - yorwba 8y ago
    They will have to bend, no doubt, but if they bend even slightly less than everyone else, that's still a win.
    - fucking_tragedy 8y ago
      No, it's not. "Everyone else is doing it" is not an excuse to help put people in camps.
      - yorwba 8y ago
        It is if you doing it puts fewer people in camps than the alternative.
        fucking_tragedy 8y ago
        The entire point of entering the Chinese market is to make money. Google will make more money doing what the CCP asks well and without question. Putting less people in camps and playing games with the CCP means less money or even losing the Chinese market.
        ionised 8y ago
        Which will never be how it works. You think the Chinese government will accept Google deliberately making it more difficult for them to surveill and imprison dissidents? You're out of your mind if you believe they would allow this in any way. They would sooner turf Google out on its arse than tolerate any interference. The Chinese government WANTS Google. Think about why that is.
ApolloFortyNine 8y ago
>While Google is probably sad to see them go, it would be even sadder to continue missing out on the world's largest market. Honestly what I see happening, if Google isn't allowed to position themselves for a rentry into China, is Baidu eventually making an international debut. They have been developing an entire google-esque eco system in a bubble for years now. If Google was there, they wouldn't have such a strangle hold there, and wouldn't become an international threat.
- fucking_tragedy 8y ago
  Why would the CCP allow a foreign company to outcompete one of their own homegrown darlings?
  - RandomInteger4 8y ago
    What would it matter if Google is operating within the parameters of the government's censorship rules and generating tax revenue for the government?
    - fucking_tragedy 8y ago
      You're asking this question in an era where we've gotten into a trade war with China? Because the CCP and its members are heavily invested in quite literally everything that isn't a foreignly owned business operating in China.
      - throwaway2048 8y ago
        they are invested in those too (mandatory Chinese partners with 51% control, with mandatory IP transfers)
    - pertymcpert 8y ago
      It matters a great deal indeed.
omouse 8y ago
> further strengthening management's choices I think people are forgetting that each of those Google (former) employees have shares and are also shareholders and shareholders will start to get pissed when management is screwing up and will call for a new CEO or new execs or a new board to be put into place that will get Google back on track: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/16/technology/tech-workers-company-stock-shareholder-activism.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/16/technology/tech-workers-c... > I doubt the employee protests will win out here in the long run. If they lose more employees it can be argued that they're ignoring their fiduciary duty to the shareholders by tarnishing the brand of Google which makes hiring more difficult which leads to less profits. There's already activist shareholders asking for more gender diversity data for example: https://www.fastcompany.com/40474369/activist-investor-demands-that-google-provide-more-data-on-its-gender-pay-gap https://www.fastcompany.com/40474369/activist-investor-deman...
- robbrit 8y ago
  > each of those Google (former) employees have shares They have class C shares, which do not have any voting rights. Shareholders without voting rights have absolutely no power to influence policy. > If they lose more employees it can be argued that they're ignoring their fiduciary duty to the shareholders by tarnishing the brand of Google which makes hiring more difficult which leads to less profits. You're making a lot of jumps of logic here so I'll split things up: > If they lose more employees They're not bleeding employees so quickly that it will cause a problem, the overwhelming majority of Googlers will not leave over this. There's just a few of them, enough to make headlines but not enough to cause any real issue. > tarnishing the brand of Google They'd have to tarnish it a lot to get people to stop wanting to work for Google. Even with the latest headlines and controversies, it's still one of the best paying companies out there with awesome benefits, interesting work, and prestigious status. Even employees who are uncomfortable with some of the choices the company is making will think twice before giving all that up. > which leads to less profits In the long run this might be true. I'll use the counter-example of Microsoft though: they were the demon for decades and are still one of the most valuable companies in the world. If a tarnished brand for employees guaranteed less profits, they would have died a long time ago.
ionised 8y ago
> it would be even sadder to continue missing out on the world's largest market. Is that sad though? Really? I'm not exactly tearing up at the thought.

rodneyzeng 8y ago

This means Google has not realized the situation when the bottom line of Chinese government is touched. They will learn this lesson from China.

contingencies 8y ago

Objective observation: What do you call censorship in other countries? Legal obligations. What is the algorithmic effect of pushing something below the first fold? The same, but global. It is nonsensical to be outraged at one and calm regarding the other. The system powering the other has always been closed, deniable, safely distant from a legal perspective... and wields far more power globally than any government, answering to nobody. Here in China, Baidu really is terrible ... a censored Google would be useful, but one may argue it sets a poor precedent. Unfortunately, AFAIK national censorship rules are an existing feature of all major search engines...

ProAm 8y ago

Why would they? Google fears China is going to create their own version of Google and will lose access to the country and possibly more of Asia. They are going to try very hard to keep their foot in the door there.

topspin 8y ago
> Why would they? Morals, perhaps.
- ProAm 8y ago
  Money will always trump morals with companies. It's not ideal but the truth.
  - abakker 8y ago
    If corporations are people, then laws are corporation's moral compass. The solution would likely be to produce regulations to provide a moral compass to corporations so that they are required to exhibit the behavior we would like them to have. Corporations are legal automatons, and need to be treated as such. This doesn't necessarily mean we need more rules - we could easily improve regulation by creating rules with fewer, broader commands. Certainly, this would create some inefficiency, but it would be inefficiency on the commercial side, rather than the legislative one. (i.e. simpler, broader laws make certain commercial activities illegal when there might be nuanced reasons that they should be allowed, vs detailed and exhaustive regulations create more corporate opportunity but also more loopholes and regulatory surface area.)
    - nostrademons 8y ago
      This is pretty challenging for a multinational corporation operating in a globalized world. The issue here is that Google is trying to produce a product that conforms to Chinese laws for doing business in China. These laws are deeply offensive and immoral to many people in Google's largely-American workforce. Trying to create a moral compass that multinational corporations can live by requires creating laws that apply to everyone on earth. Personally, I think that's a great idea. Then the hard work is in finding a set of global laws that everyone can agree on, and that's the sticking point, because peoples' moral sensibilities on earth are largely contradictory. Americans would be quick to say "Well, we should all operate under democracy - let the people decide what these laws should be", not realizing that if we actually did world democracy 1-person-1-vote style, the legal framework they would live under would likely be some weird amalgamation of the Chinese & Indian political systems, because close to 50% of the population lives in those countries. America would get about 5% of the vote, so it's a good bet that our wishes would be ignored. Personally, though I love the idea of world government in theory, I didn't sign up for those conditions. Given the general resistance to globalization by populist bodies in basically every nation on earth, most other people didn't either.

whoisjuan 8y ago

I find kind of hypocrite to reject the idea of a company working in a product that serves the Chinese market (which, btw, is ultra protectionist), while actively consuming goods that are manufactured in China. I'm not saying that people don't have the right to morally object something like this project, but it's kind of baffling that many are loudly voicing their concerns and demonizing any company that is attempting to do something in China, while looking the other way when tweeting from their Chinese made iPhones, and writing dissenting articles in their Chinese made computers. People should try to find better ways to calibrate their moral compass and focus their activism into more important and threatening issues. There are liberties that are being violated right here, right now. If you think you can't work at Google because they are building a product for China, it would be pretty hard to work for any company in America, given how everything in this country is piggybacked on Chinese made goods.

mc32 8y ago
Moreover we’re all consuming censored results. One is more heavy handed than the other, but we’re all consuming curated results, to one extent or another.
karim 8y ago
> I'm not saying that people don't have the right to morally object something like this project, but it's kind of baffling that many are loudly voice their concerns while looking the other way when tweet from their Chinese made iPhones, and write dissenting articles in their Chinese made computers. I don't get it — following your logic people shouldn't be protesting anything China-related because they're using chinese goods? I mean, this isn't a binary issue — you can buy chinese computers because most computers are made there and regret that Google is building a search engine to censor political queries.
- whoisjuan 8y ago
  I agree with you. My comment is about those who put these issues at the center of high-profile debates and seem to demonize individuals and organizations without looking at how their actions contribute to the issue. By no means, I'm trying to say that you can't regret an issue without indirectly being part of a system that aggravates the same issue. I think nobody can escape this. But it's different when you want to raise someone or something to a certain moral standard without understanding how fungible is that particular moral standard. Sometimes people are just wasting their energy on things that are only an issue by their standards and not by the standards of the people who are ultimately affected by the issue itself (in this case the Chinese people). I would like to see Google employees object with the same energy, things like Google unhinged data collection practices.

o10449366 8y ago

Google execs know that as long as they have the best benefits in the industry and keep their workers cushy they'll also have complete control over them. This is because when you're at the top of the food chain, very few people are actually willing to put their money where their mouth is and take meaningful action. It's deliciously hypocritical to see Google workers here (and HN posters in general) lament Facebook workers for being morally corrupt when they continue to enable and find excuses for Google and are guilty of the same thing. Google will move forward with expansion into China. Anyone who doesn't believe that is frankly naive. The further censorship of the Chinese populace will be 100% in the name of greed and profit. But why should Googlers care? After all, those free meals, pools, video game rooms, and gyms aren't going to pay for themselves.

math_and_stuff 8y ago
Pushback from employees, human rights groups, and congress has already significantly set back the project. The fight has to continue, but I don't understand your defeatism. Source: I publicly resigned from Google over dragonfly and dedicated months of my life and income to fighting it.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- jimmy1 8y ago
  > but I don't understand your defeatism. > I publicly resigned from Google Because for every one that resigned, there are most likely hundreds that stay. I do admire your courage and willing to take a stand. In the face of an oppressive government like China I hope I would have the courage to do the same.
  - MRD85 8y ago
    And tons that will be willing to replace them.
    - 8y ago

supernova87a 8y ago

Google invited these long-term problems onto itself (and so did many other startups) by marketing a culture aside from their technology that got people to join them. "Do good" they said, which invited people to judge them and decide to work there based on whether they continued doing good. Compare to other companies that were not so "hot" that just promised some less fulfilling employment, but no strong moral or global cause. Now it has come back to bite them in an employee culture that feels the need to talk about politics at work, invite college-level-immature debate in internal forums, redirect the business with non-business-related concerns -- especially chasing each year's latest fad of social concern. They now feel the pressure to become a more grown up company, one that has to stomach having customers who hold the same ideals as they do. But every business has to blind itself sometimes to customers who use your product in ways you didn't intend or choose to. That's the cost of being a public company. I'm exhausted even just watching Google have to tune its morals for the new political flavor of each season. I say, all for the better, for it to act like a normal business.

geofft 8y ago
A counterpoint: Google believed they could attract better engineers (which can be explained either as genuinely more skilled people, who have more ability to choose where they work, or simply more passionate people) with the "Don't be evil" policy. Oracle existed all along. Google wanted to not be Oracle. Now, Google has decided they want contracts like they're Oracle and they want staff like they're not Oracle. They can't have it both ways. It's not so much that Oracle is a more grown-up company because it learned to pursue profits and not good - it's just that it's easier to survive that way. (Hence the appearance that Oracle is a "normal" business; it's an easier way to run a business, is all, so more businesses do that.) Nobody forced Google to be a public company. Nobody forced Google to grow as big as it did. Nobody forced Google to talk to China. They brought this on themselves, and they should have known that they couldn't do this and still remain Google.
- scarmig 8y ago
  > Nobody forced Google to be a public company This is the relevant part. As soon as you're public, it inevitably introduces strong pressures to pursue profit no matter its cost, as it decouples the negative social externalities corporate actions can cause from the profit made from those actions.

est 8y ago

AdSense China grew 60% last year. Yeah Google is making a profit in China. which need some kind of tool to support it. Maybe harvest list of content you are not allowed to advertise with?

cromwellian 8y ago
AFAIK, That's Chinese companies using AdSense to advertise in Western markets, it's not "AdSense in China". I've never seen a single Chinese website using AdSense.
- est 8y ago
  Maybe the "Chinese-feeling-friendly" ads is a growing requirement in Western markets. No chinese wish to see their country is a shithole from AdSense.

CKN23-ARIN 8y ago

If Google didn't use a monorepo, it would have been much harder for these employees to keep tabs on Dragonfly-related code.

ehsankia 8y ago
I personally find it a bit suspicious that every single piece of information we have on Dragonfly has come from The Intercept, which probably got it all from a single source. And yet everyone in these threads take all this info as fact. Clearly if it was so open, we'd have a lot more sources here. I also don't feel right making judgement on a project when I've only heard one side of the story, from a source which is clearly biased against it.
- 0xfffafaCrash 8y ago
  The Intercept is an obvious choice to leak this sort of information, especially given their reputation for having the backs of their sources (with one notable failure -- the NSA leak where they published raw documents leading inadvertently to an identification of the source due to printer stenography) and focus on tech/surveillance issues. The previous stories re: Dragonfly were widely corroborated by many involved at Google since the story broke and reputable sources like the NYT had significant corroborating coverage. I don't see why it's suspicious or indicative that it's coming from a single source just because the Intercept is breaking more of these stories. Anyone familiar with what's been leaked and any interest in publishing an update on this story would have little reason to send it elsewhere instead.
alkibiades 8y ago
their open source projects (chrome etc) aren't in the mono repo and highly doubt dragonfly is

lnyng 8y ago

While it seems like people don't like the idea of this censored search engine called Dragonfly, I wonder what people think about Microsoft's Bing. Bing is definitely running a censored version in China, or it will not survive the government regulation. Is Bing less bad than Dragonfly in terms of censorship? or is it also bad but engineers in Microsoft care little about that?

perfmode 8y ago
Google is the one that matters. Priorities. Given infinite time and resources, by all means: pursue infinite objectives. Given finite resources, sort in impact-priority order. search engines aren’t like weeds

snek 8y ago

I miss Larry :(

appsonify 8y ago

I don't get the pushback....you signed up to work for a for-profit publicly traded corporation. You received your benefits and compensation. Now suddenly, you have a problem with your employer trying to do its job which is continue to please wall street that impacts the share price? it's kinda like that pushback from MS that was puzzling too....whether you like it or not, the very work you are doing in university to where you end up workiung, directly or indirectly contributes to somebody on the other side of the planet not having the things you have so you can keep the stuff you have.... the entitlement, and the blatant ignorance is just mind boggling...where does this mentality come from? This type of shit is now encroaching even video games... in Battlefield V, the game has been completely neutered of its historic accuracy....Redheaded cutie with a robot arm in WW2?

MereInterest 8y ago
People often have some amount of morals that go into which job they have. This typically plays into the choice of jobs. Taking a job that has military contracts is a moral stance, as is taking a job that does not. Taking a job that supports dictatorships is a moral stance, as is taking a job that does not. When a company changes their moral stances, this acts against the previous choices of the employees who work there. Of course it is reasonable to protest these changes. Corporations are composed of people. To imply that this relieves people of any moral responsibility for the actions of corporations is absurd.
- appsonify 8y ago
  Corporations are made up of people but the corporation itself is NOT the sum of its people, it is its own entity, hell US corporations have the same human rights and social number. The difference is a corporation is void of moral conscience, so you can't really expect to bring your own Judeo-Christian ethics here
  - MereInterest 8y ago
    I agree that corporations are not just the sum of its parts. It is entirely valid to model a corporation as an artificial intelligence that happens to use human brains as hardware. Taking a job at a corporation can then be seen either as joining it, or as interacting with it. If one is joining a corporation, the individual's choices are part of the AI that drives the corporation. In this case, it is essential for individuals to act morally, in order to predispose the corporation to act morally. If one is interacting with a corporation, there is no expectation that it will behave morally. Therefore, to increase the likelihood that it will perform moral actions, it should be painful for the corporation to perform immoral actions. That punishment can be inflicted by bringing negative PR, by negotiating contracts that avoid immoral actions, or by quitting and thereby forcing the company to pay higher wages to attract the same talent.

g9yuayon 8y ago

Just because you don't like be censored, you'd rather deprive every Chinese's access to information of much much better quality. Yes, a few percent of searches will be censored, but the other 90+% of them are still miles better than Baidu's. Yet the righteous Google employees rather let people die of misinformation provided by Baidu(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Wei_Zexi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Wei_Zexi). They'd rather see event like this happen everyday in China: https://www.ft.com/content/9be0b974-10e9-11e6-bb40-c30e3bfcf63b https://www.ft.com/content/9be0b974-10e9-11e6-bb40-c30e3bfcf.... They'd rather let ordinary people comb through pages of thinly disguised ads to get to truly useful pages. They'd rather let good people be bombarded with false information by Baidu. They'd rather deny billions of people's access to vast number of educational videos on Youtube. Yeah, right, this is some people's version of justice. Yup, political ideal certainly is more important than the quality life of billions of real, ordinary people. What a bunch of hypocrites.

curt15 8y ago
>but the other 90+% of them are still miles better than Baidu's And you know this how, given that google hasn't operated in china for the last ten years?
- g9yuayon 8y ago
  https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/10/16/google-really-is-trying-build-censored-chinese-search-engine-its-ceo-confirms/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.cab0c09d7760 https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/10/16/google-... Okay, let's say you don't trust Google's number, then think about this: how many web pages are about politics that are sensitive to Chinese government, and how many web pages are about our everyday life? Edit: oh you mean quality of Google search compared with Baidu's? Well, for one, Google does not use paid listing, and there are numerous reports that compare Google and Baidu's search quality.
jonathanyc 8y ago
Wow, this is the most insane argument I have ever heard for censored search by Google in China. Arguing that Google search is some moral good that Google has a moral obligation to bestow upon the Chinese people lest their “quality life [sic]” suffer is the most laughable claim I have heard this year. It is reasonable to argue that Google either should or shouldn’t respect Chinese laws in this area. Your line of reasoning is just way off the mark.

mruts 8y ago

I don’t think I would want to develop a censored search engine (though I’d certainly reconsider for enough money), nor do I think it’s “right” (whatever that means), but I still think that in the intetests of its shareholders, it has a moral and fiscal obligation to make as much money as possible, in perpuitity. I think this implies that Google should go into China. It’s unlikely that Google would make less net profit after entering China, the blowback isn’t impacting financials, and therefore, it’s probably the right decision to move into China. Personally, I think censorship (all censorship, not just political) is wrong, but if I was the CEO of Google I would be forced to either resign or go into China. And since I follow the money, I probably wouldn’t resign.

ionised 8y ago
> it has a moral and fiscal obligation to make as much money as possible, in perpuitity. This is simply untrue. Also a 'moral obligation to make as much money as possible' is fucking hilarious.
- mruts 8y ago
  How’s that? And what is untrue about the obligations to its shareholders? Not maximizing shareholder value is illegal.
  - CharlesColeman 8y ago
    > How’s that? Someone already explained much of it to you 13 hours ago, in a reply to another comment of yours expressing the similar ideas: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19308149 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19308149

geuszb 8y ago

> [Sundar Pichai views] the censorship as a worthwhile trade-off to gain access to the country’s more than 800 million internet users Citation needed. Alternatively, Google's mission of "organizing the world's information" isn't quite complete if it continues not serving China. Alternatively still, the real danger is not lost opportunity, but the emergence of a strong Chinese ecosystem (from network equipment all the way up to search and apps) that will steamroll Google's current Android-based hold onto the developing world. Which would you rather believe, the CEO as a sellout who would do anything for a buck, or as a purist on a principled quest to be as useful as possible to mankind, or as a strategic leader aware of the risk of letting competition grow unchallenged? Believe what you want about it, but neither is "news", just opinion.

throwaway6834 8y ago
Sundar has as much vision as a blindfolded mole. He is after the money, plain and simple. Source: work at google, for ~8 years
- crakenzak 8y ago
  Elaborate? He's shown to be a solid leader with the consistent investments into AI and other products etc...
- elchupanebre 8y ago
  Second that. I worked for 5 years there including directly with Sengupta (in charge of Dragonfly) and in passing with Pichai. Pichai was a politician who saw his mission in finding a balance between power groups, nothing more.

fabianhjr 8y ago

> We think we have an open society because we can criticize our government, but the company we work for has far more impact on our lives, and if you criticize them publicly they will fire you. The private sphere is still run like a dictatorship, by thousands of petty tyrants. Source: https://twitter.com/existentialcoms/status/1051547413083652096 https://twitter.com/existentialcoms/status/10515474130836520... In this particular case, Google and other top tech companies tend not to fire employees for being too critical but still lack any sort of democratic control by their stakeholders (workers, community, etc). More on the matter: < https://newsyndicalist.org/2017/09/30/union-cooperative-strategy-david-oconnell/ https://newsyndicalist.org/2017/09/30/union-cooperative-stra... >

KorematsuFred 8y ago

G! employees opposition to Dragonfly is nothing but veiled colonial white man's burden idea rebooted. For most westerners the notion that other countries might have different systems, different values and yet not be savages or evil is hard to digest. The same individuals would happily bend over and grease up when EU comes with idiotic Quxotian regulations, or when Congress passes stupid bills but somehow the idea that Google should comply with Chinese laws is unfathomable to these silicon valley hippies. There is no need for China to uphold any American values including free speech and yet be a happy prospering society. Chinese people will figure out how to maximize their happiness in due course of time. Meanwhile Google can either make profit from world's largest market or end up at the bottom of heap of virtue signaling companies.

C1sc0cat 8y ago
So your saying Racism Human rights abuses are ok if your not white - is that not racist in its self. You cant rightly criticise the "west" for colonial abuses and then turn round and say oh but when we do it its different.
kkarakk 8y ago
My one month old account friend, using logical fallacies isn't going to convert anyone to your cause. whataboutisms, blaming cultural insensitivity etc DOES NOT WORK for a country that blatantly tells it's citizens "either support the party line or die" like china.

echan00 8y ago

Maybe this isn't what people want to hear, but there is no reason why Google should not work on some version of their search for China. Google is a huge company (one of the biggest in the world), and they need to diversify their risk by having such an endeavor in their pocket. It DOES NOT mean they need to release it, and it does not mean that even if they do, the version will look like the one they are working on right now.

testcross 8y ago

I wonder how people working for the dragonfly project are feeling. It looks like the rest of the company hate what they are doing. But if they support censorship, they might not care what other people are thinking.

olalonde 8y ago
A lot of people support the dragonfly project, you just don't hear about them on HN (namely, almost every Chinese people I've talked to).

snazzycalynx 8y ago

Did the Author ever determine if the source images came from Drone-based WAMI or Satellite-based WAMI as originally reported? The original article in the intercept noted that the Google e-mails they had obtained showed that it was Satellite-based WAMI - which would sort of be a big deal..... AKA - who needs solar powered High Altitude Long Endurance (HALE) drone planes, blimps or aerostats to deploy Wide Area Persistent Surveillance when you can just put WAMI on Micro-sats that never come down and never blink?

sevilo 8y ago

What a joke, Google as a company (and its employees) are massive hypocrites who criticizes China for its censorship and silencing speeches and free thoughts, then they themselves silence and punish employees for not aligning with THEIR opinion and political views on things. Let's not forget the time Google fired the employee for having a different view on diversity.

hrdwdmrbl 8y ago

Love it when Americans make decisions for Chinese people and presume to know what they'd want. Maybe try asking them what they want. Or even just think about what you'd want if you lived in China. Living in China, you know your search engine will be censored. But still, wouldn't you want the best censored search engine that you can get?

hrdwdmrbl 8y ago
I should note that I myself am not Chinese either, but I do live there and its not pleasant having to use Bing, etc.
- chopin 8y ago
  Out of curiosity: Does Startpage work there?
  - hrdwdmrbl 8y ago
    nope, just tried it
ppseafield 8y ago
> Love it when Americans make decisions for Chinese people and presume to know what they'd want. This is a discussion about Google (an American company) employees talking about one of Google's projects (as directed by the American company's leadership), but it happens to be about a product for another country. > Living in China, you know your search engine will be censored. But still, wouldn't you want the best censored search engine that you can get? As many folks in China use VPNs to get around the Great Firewall, it seems like they would like an uncensored internet.
- hrdwdmrbl 8y ago
  Oh certainly I think they're like an uncensored internet but unfortunately Google is not going to cause that to happen. Even with an uncensored Google you still wouldn't be able to access the links. It should also be said that while many Chinese do have VPN they are often pretty bad (SLOW!) and often break. They are also only used by more sophisticated users or enthusiastic users. Most people are too lazy to bother, cost is a consideration or they are not technical enough. I do give shout-out to Google for Outline VPN though. That is them actually doing something that is changing the game

jaimex2 8y ago

Eh, if they ever release it we know Google being Google will just shut it down a few years later like every other new Google product they have released.

Chico11Kidlet 8y ago

zachguo 8y ago

Dragonfly will fail anyway even if it enters China. Google won't be allowed to do any social, payment or map related business. By offering a search product alone, there's no way Dragonfly can compete with existing eco-system, at best, it can only achieve a market share as much as DuckDuckGo obtained in US. And internet landscape in China is way more mobile-centric, and iterates faster than US already. Not sure how a crippled Google can fit in. It makes more sense for Google to focus more on GCP in China. No need to deal with all those political stuff.

savgeborn 8y ago

I don't even care what other Googlers are doing but it's the best time to deliver performance when Google is in turnmoil, I'll be securing trust of stakeholders and promotion. I'll work overtime and crank more code, while others try to debate their moral stance Always think about how you can benefit from a particular scenario