20 ms·

Google's Project Dragonfly 'Terminated' in China

264 points by nedp 7y ago

dcdevito 7y ago
Timing seems coincidental
i_am_nomad 7y ago
... for now. What would be far more reassuring would be a statement from Google that Project Dragonfly does not meet their ethical standards as a company.
- _jal 7y ago
  Yeah. This seems rather like carriers selling location data, or the NSA and domestic surveillance. Both have stopped happening so many times that the only thing I'm sure about is that they will stop again sometime soon.
- qserasera 7y ago
  "The project was reported to have ceased late last year but rumors that it remained active persisted." so that's probably never going to be 'terminated'
  - yoz-y 7y ago
    rumors != fact
    - ionised 7y ago
      I attended a talk by Jack Poulson (quit Google over Dragonfly and how it was handled) over the last weekend and he suggested that based on Google's reaction, it has definitely been simply shelved until the resistance and media attention dies down. The whole thing was carried out in secret to begin with and Sundar Pichai has been completely silent on how it jives with it's own ethical standards.
- anvandare 7y ago
  The fact that they even started the project speaks for itself. Companies don't have ethical standards, only slick PR departments.
  - geophertz 7y ago
    Strangely people do not care about Apple doing the same thing. Even on HN posts talking about how Apple sells privacy as a product are upvoted and reach > 1000 upvotes.
    - lonelappde 7y ago
      As I understand it, Apple allows iOS users to use an end to end encrypted product with an option to back up to Chinese Communist Party silo of iCloud. Apple does not offer a product that spies on user usage all the time monitoring for thought crime, as Web Search just under Chinese law.
    - ApolloFortyNine 7y ago
      You know what company was once in China and pulled out on moral grounds? Google. [1] Yet nobody cares, as evidenced by the number of companies who do plenty of business in China without backlash. So Google tries to go back to China, and everyone loses their minds. It's frustrating to be honest, it's as if they're be punished for a good deed they did 10 years ago. If they had just never left, they'd be in the same situation as Apple, where nobody (or magnitudes less, if you want to get pedantic) cares. I at least hope governments will ban Baidu from ever competing outside of China. I would hate to see Google suffer because they weren't ever allowed to compete with Baidu on their home turf. [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/google-pulls-out-of-china-2010-3 https://www.businessinsider.com/google-pulls-out-of-china-20...
      - tgragnato 7y ago
        > I at least hope governments will ban Baidu from ever competing outside of China. "If you open the window, both fresh air and flies will be blown in." 邓小平 That ideology works and benefits China only if there is a disparity between what China is allowed to do in the rest of the world and what China allows the world to do. I am also convinced that restoring an equal relationship is a great way to make the Chinese problem settle on its own.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- pgeorgi 7y ago
  There was such a statement in 2010. Times, situations, decision makers can change, so how would such a statement help?
powerslacker 7y ago
Guess Peter Thiel scared 'em straight.
RenRav 7y ago
I wonder if they will they put this on killedbygoogle.com?
- penagwin 7y ago
  While I guess you could say it was a project killed by google (supposedly - we'll see how long that lasts), killedbygoogle.com is mostly meant to shame google, and I don't really want to shame them for cancelling this project.
  - glennpratt 7y ago
    Lord help us if we allow nuance.
  - geophertz 7y ago
    At the same time it acknowledges that the product existed in the first place shaming them for that as well.
- CydeWeys 7y ago
  Doesn't that site only list products that launched in some form?
- espeed 7y ago
  Is Hollywood on that list? Google, Apple, Amazon, and Netflix are getting blamed for it, but that was more of a YC initiative [0,1] powered by inevitable Internet economics. [0] RFS 9: Kill Hollywood https://twitter.com/paulg/status/160491053080776706 https://twitter.com/paulg/status/160491053080776706 [1] 2012 Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3491542 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3491542 https://web.archive.org/web/20120127114157/http://ycombinator.com/rfs9.html https://web.archive.org/web/20120127114157/http://ycombinato...
phoe-krk 7y ago
I am accepting bets on when the project will be terminated again in the future. Bitcoin only. Tether only in high amounts.
- skj 7y ago
  How could someone collect? Your window seems open-ended.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - ghostbrainalpha 7y ago
    There is a service called "OneHash" I think... where impartial 3rd Parties can be the judge of bets like these for a small fee on the transaction. I might be confused on the name, and can't look up Crypto stuff at work. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
chvid 7y ago
Does anyone know the exact requirements set by China on google for them to enter the Chinese market? I suppose adherence to Chinese law but what exactly? Support of law enforcement, censorship of specific sites, personal data stored in China etc...
- xxxpupugo 7y ago
  Only thing I know was Google tried to bring Play Store to Chinese market, sometimes last year, but for some reason that doesn't come to fruit. Under Xi, there is zero chance Google can have a public service offering in any way, considering its history.
  - 420codebro 7y ago
    Good. Maybe China will go a step further and completely isolate themselves from the internet. Nothing of value would be lost.
- wil421 7y ago
  Handing over whatever special sauce Google uses for Dragon Fly to a Chinese owned company or “joint” venture.
- iamnotacrook 7y ago
  Does anyone know whether there are in fact "exact requirements" at all, or whether you just have informal off the record chats with officials where you're given to understand that it would be "looked upon favourably" if this or happens or does not happen. From everything I've read about how China operates it's sort of the exact opposite in one sense from the west. In the west there are rules and there are loopholes around the rules. In China they are sort of more pragmatic - they want to protect growth & security and resist foreign interference whether cultural or religious; what's written as a rule or law or whatever isn't such a big deal; there's an understanding that you just do what you're told in that context. So they don't mind Google operating there but if Google run operations which "threaten orderliness" then it's going to have a hard time.
  - 7y ago
xxxpupugo 7y ago
Who said China would allow Google to go back in the first place?
ryanmercer 7y ago
Probably because China has sufficiently copied/stolen it to not need Google any longer. It would be trivial to put government agents inside the local team and copy whatever they wanted, or coerce the local team to contribute everything they learned to the government.
patientplatypus 7y ago
Meh...they'll rename it "Happy Pancakes", do it again until they get caught and then fire some hapless nitwit middle manager that they wanted to get rid of anyway. Yay, capitalism. Where no one's to blame and everything's always on fire.
educationdata 7y ago
This is definitely not enough. There still need to be an thorough investigation into the history of the project, at least include but not limited to: 1) the internal decision making process involving this project 2) personnel who are responsible for initiating / approving the project 3) how many resources have been put into this project 4) the exact content (data sources, roadmap, goals, etc.) of this project 5) how far this project went 6) where the product / data is stored, how will they be handled when the project is terminated 7) how many of the project outputs have being provided to the Chinese government 8) the details of Chinese government involvement into this project Also, not limited to Google, any U.S. company helps any authoritarian government doing censorship needs to be investigated. BTW, I got lots of downvotes from comments criticizing China.
ZeroCool2u 7y ago
While a certain amount of cynicism is healthy and it should be acknowledged that Google can always back track, I'm still happy that for now they've decided not to assist and facilitate one of the most Orwellian nation's to ever exist.
- sneak 7y ago
  > I'm still happy that for now they've decided not to assist and facilitate one of the most Orwellian nation's to ever exist. Don’t get too excited; they haven’t announced a lack of participation in PRISM yet. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-nsa-data https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants...
  - jkaptur 7y ago
    What would you want Google to say? "I’m not sure I can say this more clearly: we’re not in cahoots with the NSA and there’s is no government program that Google participates in that allows the kind of access that the media originally reported. Note that I say “originally” because you’ll see that many of those original sources corrected their articles after it became clear that the PRISM slides were not accurate. Now, what does happen is that we get specific requests from the government for user data. We review each of those requests and push back when the request is overly broad or doesn’t follow the correct process. There is no free-for-all, no direct access, no indirect access, no back door, no drop box." https://venturebeat.com/2013/06/19/google-issues-clearest-statement-yet-on-nsa-and-prism-no-server-access-no-back-door-no-drop-box-no-free-for-all/ https://venturebeat.com/2013/06/19/google-issues-clearest-st... (I work at Google, not in a relevant role.)
    - Kaiyou 7y ago
      "We are moving our entire business to Europe, because we legally cannot keep the NSA out of your data otherwise." would be a start.
      - vatueil 7y ago
kpU8efre7r 7y ago
Why was it terminated? In theory a search engine that merely adheres to Chinese law sounds fine. Give a better product than they already have with the same restrictions they already have. I wonder if there ended up being far more control and restrictions than they bargained for and with the increased risk of tech theft the project just wasn't worth it.
ta20190717 7y ago
Does anyone know the technical details of what Google would have needed to comply with in China? From my understanding, a lot of western companies do business in China via (51% local controlled) "Partners" that ostensibly run their infrastructure for them, and obviously have to abide by local regulation. This includes operating an "Information Security Management System" (a euphemism of a sort) that interfaces with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology for auditable end-user access logs and content blocking. It seems this is governed by these standards, but I failed to dig up a copy of them. Is it true that any western company offering a mainland Chinese version of their product exposes these interfaces? YD/T 2248-2015 - 互联网数据中心和互联网接入服务信息安全管理系统技术要求 - Interface requirements of information security management system for Internet data center/Internet service provider YD/T 2406-2017 - 互联网数据中心和互联网接入服务信息安全管理系统及接口测试方法 - Test specifications of information security management system & interface for Internet data center/Internet service provider YD/T 3212-2017 - 内容分发网络服务信息安全管理系统接口规范 - Interface standard of information security management system for content delivery network service YD/T 3213-2017 - 内容分发网络服务信息安全管理系统及接口测试方法 - Test specifications of information security management system for content delivery network service YD/T 3214-2017 - 互联网资源协作服务信息安全管理系统接口规范 - Interface specification for information security management of Internet resource collaboration service YD/T 3215-2017 - 互联网资源协作服务信息安全管理系统及接口测试方法 - Test methods of information security management system for Internet resource collaboration service
- hangonhn 7y ago
  I don't know the nuances of the new ownership laws but the 51% rule no longer applies. The Tesla gigafactory in China is wholly owned by Tesla. These protective measure is unnecessary now that China has grown so much economically.
  - sarabande 7y ago
    The 51% rule does apply for certain industries (here is the PDF: https://www.set-up-company.com/uploads/file/negative-list-for-foreign-investment-access-in-ftzs.pdf); https://www.set-up-company.com/uploads/file/negative-list-fo... an informative guide is here: https://www.set-up-company.com/the-ultimate-guide-for-china-wfoe-formation-in-2018.html https://www.set-up-company.com/the-ultimate-guide-for-china-... and I would start there. A WFOE = Wholly Foreign-Owned Enterprise is allowed for manufacturing (which I assume Tesla regulates under), but not for Telecom companies where 51% still applies. Internet services seem even worse based on a cursory reading: (42) No foreign investor is allowed to invest in Internet news services, Internet publishing services, Internet audio-visual program services, Internet culture operation (except music), Internet access service establishments, and services of information release to the public through Internet (except those under China's commitment to opening up to the outside world in its entry into the WTO).
Allower 7y ago
meaning they renamed the project of course, people fall for this trick every time.. pathetic
Gpetrium 7y ago
It would not surprise anyone if Project Dragonfly's termination occurred as a consequence of current trade spats between the two nations which could lead/has led to some animosity towards each other's products/services.
peteretep 7y ago
To me, this feels like an area Uncle Sam and the EU need to get involved in. Declare all censorship or need to comply with the Great Firewall to be a trade barrier, freeze out all Chinese tech companies on that basis, and find a way to strongly discourage American and European companies from in any way enabling it.
- kyrra 7y ago
  From the arguments at the time when dragonfly was leaked, it was brought up that there is censorship, though in a different form, already in the EU. Be it right to be forgotten, or filtering of information related to things unsavory to the past of any given country in the EU. Then the US and EU both have censorship around things protected by law. So you can sue people to take down slanderous material, or material that violates copyrights or trademarks.
  - Kurtz79 7y ago
    Right to be forgotten gives the individual the right to have his data removed from permanent storage by companies, for whatever purpose: not sure how it relates even remotely with censorship. " filtering of information related to things unsavory to the past of any given country in the EU." Some specific reference to some EU government forcing companies to remove controversial information about their countries' past would help making your point (not saying it doesn't happen).
    - dpatru 7y ago
      > Right to be forgotten gives the individual the right to have his data removed from permanent storage by companies, for whatever purpose: not sure how it relates even remotely with censorship. Books are also permanent storage, often stored centrally in public libraries. Does an individual have the right to have information about him removed from books in libraries? Wouldn't that be a kind of censorship? The only difference is that so called "right to be forgotten" applies to Google's electronic storage rather than your local library's books. Just like you don't have a right to remove pages about you from your local public library's copy of your high school yearbook, so you shouldn't have the right to remove information about yourself from Google's indexes. Both are censorship.
CorruptedArc 7y ago
It's surprising I haven't seen any 50-Cent armiers in here decrying Google for this as of yet.
fareesh 7y ago
How different is project dragonfly from what is already being proposed by some political folks in the USA? YouTube has arbitrary content policies which seem to mirror whatever the Democratic party wants. From China's POV they want the same thing except they call their party the Communist party. Guys like Dennis Prager are trying to run a YouTube channel with conservative viewpoints and are finding it impossible to do so without obstacles. I don't think there is a single channel that is right of center which is not mistreated by YouTube. Politics aside, let's look at political correctness. On YouTube you cannot be critical about a class of people because of their immigration status. I watched a documentary about of smuggling of illegal immigrants from North Africa into Europe. They showed footage of a guy who couldn't go out into his own farm at night because smugglers would trespass on his property en route to the shore where the boats were. The documentary was one of those "live" launches on YouTube. Conveniently the live launch was bugged out. I had to refresh the page an hour after I realized it didn't release. 24 hours later it was banned by YouTube. So I ask again, is it only Chinese censorship that western society has a problem with?
- TrumpSucks 7y ago
  Your average pea-brain HN reader doesn't think at this level, sadly.
La-ang 7y ago
Not buying this. It was previously told that the project was suspended while in reality it wa still worked on in secret. Chances are they will terminate Dragonfly, but start working on it under a different banner.
khc 7y ago
As an overseas Chinese (born and grew up in Hong Kong but have relatives in China) I am sadden by this and HN comments. Any claim that Google would have helped China censor Chinese citizens ignores the fact that Chinese search engines are already censored. Because laws in this area are often vague, I can see that dragonfly would apply varying levels of censorships and as a side effect, allow people to access some information that they otherwise wouldn't be able to. And by surfacing better information for queries, it can also help people finding what they want for things that are not censored. I know some people prefer to stick their noses up and hold what they perceive as the moral high ground, but do consider how lives of hundreds of millions of people will be affected by your actions/inactions.
- gowld 7y ago
  It's not just censorship. It never was. Dragonfly also includes actively assisting the Chinese Communist Party in identifying and persecuting people who look for information about freedom or for information about crimes committed by the Party/government
  - jmeng0122 7y ago
    any article or press to support your claims?
    - lern_too_spel 7y ago
      Searches would be linked to identifiable information for logged in users: https://theintercept.com/2018/09/14/google-china-prototype-links-searches-to-phone-numbers/ https://theintercept.com/2018/09/14/google-china-prototype-l... The Chinese government would be able to access that data through Google's joint venture partner in China who actually controls the data.
    - bduerst 7y ago
      The proposal for dragonfly had two conditions set by the Chinese government - the first was to provide censored search results in compliance with the firewall. The second was to link search queries to user phone numbers, which a director tried to hide and many employees revolted against: https://theintercept.com/2018/09/21/google-suppresses-memo-revealing-plans-to-closely-track-search-users-in-china/ https://theintercept.com/2018/09/21/google-suppresses-memo-r...
gowld 7y ago
The news here is just that Google told the Senate hearing confirmation of the same thing people were saying informally before.
sidibe 7y ago
It's amazing the outrage a project investigating how to comply has generated while Bing is quietly working just fine in China.
cletus 7y ago
Good. Some argue this is just Google following local laws. I say that being legal != being moral and helping the government of China censor and track citizens is not a moral position, law be damned. The amount of internal resistance this got is good evidence of this project not being consistent with the values of most of the people who work there. The fact that leadership tried to hide this project, keep it secret and deny its existence is... disappointing. Then again, I already had the opinion that Sundar is the most overpaid CEO in the world.
alexnewman 7y ago
I have friends at google still working on this.
chollier 7y ago
what about microsoft / bing? they are available in China and no one seems to give them shit compared to google
- londons_explore 7y ago
  Google employees are very vocal, and will internally protest anything they don't agree with. That protest often gets leaked to the media. Microsoft is run like a regular company where employees just do what they're told.
teknopurge 7y ago
That was fast. Good job Peter.
mnm1 7y ago
So corporate censorship (Google search outside of China) is fine but government censorship (Google search inside China) isn't. Also, government censorship by Western governments (UK, etc.) is fine but government censorship by non western governments (China) is not. I don't see much difference myself but it seems others do.
GrapeDrape 7y ago
And still, not a single fucking clue what the fuck this stupid fucking garbage code name was even supposed to be. Fuck you. Dream up some actual news.
bad_user 7y ago
I'm happy that Dragonfly is being terminated and I'm sure this is also the direct result of all Google employees who objected to it. To the Chinese people here on HN try to understand that this is larger than the welfare of the Chinese. China is now in a position to export its culture to the rest of the world due to its economic strength. It can, for example, force companies like Google to censor information to the rest of the world and this is a fact. How do I know this? Because us EU citizens already have to suffer the US views on sex and nudity, among others and the US has the strongest free speech protections of all countries. The whataboutism on this discussion btw is interesting since this forum would be censored in China and this conversation wouldn't be possible. There's no comparison to be made in terms of free speech. In China you have none. So I regret the situation, but many of us value our liberal freedoms and we don't want China to export its flavor of communism to us. Yes I was born and raised in an ex-communist country, I know communism when I see it, I don't want any and I'm prepared to fight for my freedoms. I do hope to see China become a liberal democracy. But I'm not holding my breath, because I also know what it takes for a revolution to happen and China won't be there for the foreseeable future.
- tracker1 7y ago
  Agreed... have had several friends and coworkers over the years who are expat Russian and HK, and have no love for communism. Being born in the 70's and coming up in the 80's probably means some bias on my own part. I just don't want anything resembling that level of restriction from any government. I have enough problems with my own (US) govt, let alone adding a more repressive stream.
carapace 7y ago
There is a clash of fundamental values, it's deeper than politics. Technology is driving confrontations with our values, our ideas of what it means to be human. Organlegging was science fiction, now it's happening. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organlegging https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organlegging https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_theft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_theft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_transplantation_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_transplantation_in_China "What kind of future do we want?", is no longer the question, because it's here, now.
dbg31415 7y ago
I'm happy Google is dropping this. I don't want them developing more censorship tech that they can then roll out to the US, or other markets. It should be hard to censor things on the internet, and the less effort that is put into censorship tech, the better off humanity is.
elchupanebre 7y ago
They said they have terminated the project Dragonfly. But did they actually stop working on the censored search for China? And why was the statement made by a PR dude Karan Bhatia instead of Ceasar Sengupta who was supposedly in charge of the project?

264 points by nedp 7y ago

Timing seems coincidental

... for now. What would be far more reassuring would be a statement from Google that Project Dragonfly does not meet their ethical standards as a company.

_jal 7y ago
Yeah. This seems rather like carriers selling location data, or the NSA and domestic surveillance. Both have stopped happening so many times that the only thing I'm sure about is that they will stop again sometime soon.
qserasera 7y ago
"The project was reported to have ceased late last year but rumors that it remained active persisted." so that's probably never going to be 'terminated'
- yoz-y 7y ago
  rumors != fact
  - ionised 7y ago
    I attended a talk by Jack Poulson (quit Google over Dragonfly and how it was handled) over the last weekend and he suggested that based on Google's reaction, it has definitely been simply shelved until the resistance and media attention dies down. The whole thing was carried out in secret to begin with and Sundar Pichai has been completely silent on how it jives with it's own ethical standards.
anvandare 7y ago
The fact that they even started the project speaks for itself. Companies don't have ethical standards, only slick PR departments.
- geophertz 7y ago
  Strangely people do not care about Apple doing the same thing. Even on HN posts talking about how Apple sells privacy as a product are upvoted and reach > 1000 upvotes.
  - lonelappde 7y ago
    As I understand it, Apple allows iOS users to use an end to end encrypted product with an option to back up to Chinese Communist Party silo of iCloud. Apple does not offer a product that spies on user usage all the time monitoring for thought crime, as Web Search just under Chinese law.
  - ApolloFortyNine 7y ago
    You know what company was once in China and pulled out on moral grounds? Google. [1] Yet nobody cares, as evidenced by the number of companies who do plenty of business in China without backlash. So Google tries to go back to China, and everyone loses their minds. It's frustrating to be honest, it's as if they're be punished for a good deed they did 10 years ago. If they had just never left, they'd be in the same situation as Apple, where nobody (or magnitudes less, if you want to get pedantic) cares. I at least hope governments will ban Baidu from ever competing outside of China. I would hate to see Google suffer because they weren't ever allowed to compete with Baidu on their home turf. [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/google-pulls-out-of-china-2010-3 https://www.businessinsider.com/google-pulls-out-of-china-20...
    - tgragnato 7y ago
      > I at least hope governments will ban Baidu from ever competing outside of China. "If you open the window, both fresh air and flies will be blown in." 邓小平 That ideology works and benefits China only if there is a disparity between what China is allowed to do in the rest of the world and what China allows the world to do. I am also convinced that restoring an equal relationship is a great way to make the Chinese problem settle on its own.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
pgeorgi 7y ago
There was such a statement in 2010. Times, situations, decision makers can change, so how would such a statement help?

powerslacker 7y ago

Guess Peter Thiel scared 'em straight.

RenRav 7y ago

I wonder if they will they put this on killedbygoogle.com?

penagwin 7y ago
While I guess you could say it was a project killed by google (supposedly - we'll see how long that lasts), killedbygoogle.com is mostly meant to shame google, and I don't really want to shame them for cancelling this project.
- glennpratt 7y ago
  Lord help us if we allow nuance.
- geophertz 7y ago
  At the same time it acknowledges that the product existed in the first place shaming them for that as well.
CydeWeys 7y ago
Doesn't that site only list products that launched in some form?
espeed 7y ago
Is Hollywood on that list? Google, Apple, Amazon, and Netflix are getting blamed for it, but that was more of a YC initiative [0,1] powered by inevitable Internet economics. [0] RFS 9: Kill Hollywood https://twitter.com/paulg/status/160491053080776706 https://twitter.com/paulg/status/160491053080776706 [1] 2012 Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3491542 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3491542 https://web.archive.org/web/20120127114157/http://ycombinator.com/rfs9.html https://web.archive.org/web/20120127114157/http://ycombinato...

phoe-krk 7y ago

I am accepting bets on when the project will be terminated again in the future. Bitcoin only. Tether only in high amounts.

skj 7y ago
How could someone collect? Your window seems open-ended.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- ghostbrainalpha 7y ago
  There is a service called "OneHash" I think... where impartial 3rd Parties can be the judge of bets like these for a small fee on the transaction. I might be confused on the name, and can't look up Crypto stuff at work. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

chvid 7y ago

Does anyone know the exact requirements set by China on google for them to enter the Chinese market? I suppose adherence to Chinese law but what exactly? Support of law enforcement, censorship of specific sites, personal data stored in China etc...

xxxpupugo 7y ago
Only thing I know was Google tried to bring Play Store to Chinese market, sometimes last year, but for some reason that doesn't come to fruit. Under Xi, there is zero chance Google can have a public service offering in any way, considering its history.
- 420codebro 7y ago
  Good. Maybe China will go a step further and completely isolate themselves from the internet. Nothing of value would be lost.
wil421 7y ago
Handing over whatever special sauce Google uses for Dragon Fly to a Chinese owned company or “joint” venture.
iamnotacrook 7y ago
Does anyone know whether there are in fact "exact requirements" at all, or whether you just have informal off the record chats with officials where you're given to understand that it would be "looked upon favourably" if this or happens or does not happen. From everything I've read about how China operates it's sort of the exact opposite in one sense from the west. In the west there are rules and there are loopholes around the rules. In China they are sort of more pragmatic - they want to protect growth & security and resist foreign interference whether cultural or religious; what's written as a rule or law or whatever isn't such a big deal; there's an understanding that you just do what you're told in that context. So they don't mind Google operating there but if Google run operations which "threaten orderliness" then it's going to have a hard time.
- 7y ago

xxxpupugo 7y ago

Who said China would allow Google to go back in the first place?

ryanmercer 7y ago

Probably because China has sufficiently copied/stolen it to not need Google any longer. It would be trivial to put government agents inside the local team and copy whatever they wanted, or coerce the local team to contribute everything they learned to the government.

patientplatypus 7y ago

Meh...they'll rename it "Happy Pancakes", do it again until they get caught and then fire some hapless nitwit middle manager that they wanted to get rid of anyway. Yay, capitalism. Where no one's to blame and everything's always on fire.

educationdata 7y ago

This is definitely not enough. There still need to be an thorough investigation into the history of the project, at least include but not limited to: 1) the internal decision making process involving this project 2) personnel who are responsible for initiating / approving the project 3) how many resources have been put into this project 4) the exact content (data sources, roadmap, goals, etc.) of this project 5) how far this project went 6) where the product / data is stored, how will they be handled when the project is terminated 7) how many of the project outputs have being provided to the Chinese government 8) the details of Chinese government involvement into this project Also, not limited to Google, any U.S. company helps any authoritarian government doing censorship needs to be investigated. BTW, I got lots of downvotes from comments criticizing China.

ZeroCool2u 7y ago

While a certain amount of cynicism is healthy and it should be acknowledged that Google can always back track, I'm still happy that for now they've decided not to assist and facilitate one of the most Orwellian nation's to ever exist.

sneak 7y ago
> I'm still happy that for now they've decided not to assist and facilitate one of the most Orwellian nation's to ever exist. Don’t get too excited; they haven’t announced a lack of participation in PRISM yet. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-nsa-data https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants...
- jkaptur 7y ago
  What would you want Google to say? "I’m not sure I can say this more clearly: we’re not in cahoots with the NSA and there’s is no government program that Google participates in that allows the kind of access that the media originally reported. Note that I say “originally” because you’ll see that many of those original sources corrected their articles after it became clear that the PRISM slides were not accurate. Now, what does happen is that we get specific requests from the government for user data. We review each of those requests and push back when the request is overly broad or doesn’t follow the correct process. There is no free-for-all, no direct access, no indirect access, no back door, no drop box." https://venturebeat.com/2013/06/19/google-issues-clearest-statement-yet-on-nsa-and-prism-no-server-access-no-back-door-no-drop-box-no-free-for-all/ https://venturebeat.com/2013/06/19/google-issues-clearest-st... (I work at Google, not in a relevant role.)
  - Kaiyou 7y ago
    "We are moving our entire business to Europe, because we legally cannot keep the NSA out of your data otherwise." would be a start.
    - vatueil 7y ago

kpU8efre7r 7y ago

Why was it terminated? In theory a search engine that merely adheres to Chinese law sounds fine. Give a better product than they already have with the same restrictions they already have. I wonder if there ended up being far more control and restrictions than they bargained for and with the increased risk of tech theft the project just wasn't worth it.

ta20190717 7y ago

Does anyone know the technical details of what Google would have needed to comply with in China? From my understanding, a lot of western companies do business in China via (51% local controlled) "Partners" that ostensibly run their infrastructure for them, and obviously have to abide by local regulation. This includes operating an "Information Security Management System" (a euphemism of a sort) that interfaces with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology for auditable end-user access logs and content blocking. It seems this is governed by these standards, but I failed to dig up a copy of them. Is it true that any western company offering a mainland Chinese version of their product exposes these interfaces? YD/T 2248-2015 - 互联网数据中心和互联网接入服务信息安全管理系统技术要求 - Interface requirements of information security management system for Internet data center/Internet service provider YD/T 2406-2017 - 互联网数据中心和互联网接入服务信息安全管理系统及接口测试方法 - Test specifications of information security management system & interface for Internet data center/Internet service provider YD/T 3212-2017 - 内容分发网络服务信息安全管理系统接口规范 - Interface standard of information security management system for content delivery network service YD/T 3213-2017 - 内容分发网络服务信息安全管理系统及接口测试方法 - Test specifications of information security management system for content delivery network service YD/T 3214-2017 - 互联网资源协作服务信息安全管理系统接口规范 - Interface specification for information security management of Internet resource collaboration service YD/T 3215-2017 - 互联网资源协作服务信息安全管理系统及接口测试方法 - Test methods of information security management system for Internet resource collaboration service

hangonhn 7y ago
I don't know the nuances of the new ownership laws but the 51% rule no longer applies. The Tesla gigafactory in China is wholly owned by Tesla. These protective measure is unnecessary now that China has grown so much economically.
- sarabande 7y ago
  The 51% rule does apply for certain industries (here is the PDF: https://www.set-up-company.com/uploads/file/negative-list-for-foreign-investment-access-in-ftzs.pdf); https://www.set-up-company.com/uploads/file/negative-list-fo... an informative guide is here: https://www.set-up-company.com/the-ultimate-guide-for-china-wfoe-formation-in-2018.html https://www.set-up-company.com/the-ultimate-guide-for-china-... and I would start there. A WFOE = Wholly Foreign-Owned Enterprise is allowed for manufacturing (which I assume Tesla regulates under), but not for Telecom companies where 51% still applies. Internet services seem even worse based on a cursory reading: (42) No foreign investor is allowed to invest in Internet news services, Internet publishing services, Internet audio-visual program services, Internet culture operation (except music), Internet access service establishments, and services of information release to the public through Internet (except those under China's commitment to opening up to the outside world in its entry into the WTO).

Allower 7y ago

meaning they renamed the project of course, people fall for this trick every time.. pathetic

Gpetrium 7y ago

It would not surprise anyone if Project Dragonfly's termination occurred as a consequence of current trade spats between the two nations which could lead/has led to some animosity towards each other's products/services.

peteretep 7y ago

To me, this feels like an area Uncle Sam and the EU need to get involved in. Declare all censorship or need to comply with the Great Firewall to be a trade barrier, freeze out all Chinese tech companies on that basis, and find a way to strongly discourage American and European companies from in any way enabling it.

kyrra 7y ago
From the arguments at the time when dragonfly was leaked, it was brought up that there is censorship, though in a different form, already in the EU. Be it right to be forgotten, or filtering of information related to things unsavory to the past of any given country in the EU. Then the US and EU both have censorship around things protected by law. So you can sue people to take down slanderous material, or material that violates copyrights or trademarks.
- Kurtz79 7y ago
  Right to be forgotten gives the individual the right to have his data removed from permanent storage by companies, for whatever purpose: not sure how it relates even remotely with censorship. " filtering of information related to things unsavory to the past of any given country in the EU." Some specific reference to some EU government forcing companies to remove controversial information about their countries' past would help making your point (not saying it doesn't happen).
  - dpatru 7y ago
    > Right to be forgotten gives the individual the right to have his data removed from permanent storage by companies, for whatever purpose: not sure how it relates even remotely with censorship. Books are also permanent storage, often stored centrally in public libraries. Does an individual have the right to have information about him removed from books in libraries? Wouldn't that be a kind of censorship? The only difference is that so called "right to be forgotten" applies to Google's electronic storage rather than your local library's books. Just like you don't have a right to remove pages about you from your local public library's copy of your high school yearbook, so you shouldn't have the right to remove information about yourself from Google's indexes. Both are censorship.

CorruptedArc 7y ago

It's surprising I haven't seen any 50-Cent armiers in here decrying Google for this as of yet.

fareesh 7y ago

How different is project dragonfly from what is already being proposed by some political folks in the USA? YouTube has arbitrary content policies which seem to mirror whatever the Democratic party wants. From China's POV they want the same thing except they call their party the Communist party. Guys like Dennis Prager are trying to run a YouTube channel with conservative viewpoints and are finding it impossible to do so without obstacles. I don't think there is a single channel that is right of center which is not mistreated by YouTube. Politics aside, let's look at political correctness. On YouTube you cannot be critical about a class of people because of their immigration status. I watched a documentary about of smuggling of illegal immigrants from North Africa into Europe. They showed footage of a guy who couldn't go out into his own farm at night because smugglers would trespass on his property en route to the shore where the boats were. The documentary was one of those "live" launches on YouTube. Conveniently the live launch was bugged out. I had to refresh the page an hour after I realized it didn't release. 24 hours later it was banned by YouTube. So I ask again, is it only Chinese censorship that western society has a problem with?

TrumpSucks 7y ago
Your average pea-brain HN reader doesn't think at this level, sadly.

La-ang 7y ago

Not buying this. It was previously told that the project was suspended while in reality it wa still worked on in secret. Chances are they will terminate Dragonfly, but start working on it under a different banner.

khc 7y ago

As an overseas Chinese (born and grew up in Hong Kong but have relatives in China) I am sadden by this and HN comments. Any claim that Google would have helped China censor Chinese citizens ignores the fact that Chinese search engines are already censored. Because laws in this area are often vague, I can see that dragonfly would apply varying levels of censorships and as a side effect, allow people to access some information that they otherwise wouldn't be able to. And by surfacing better information for queries, it can also help people finding what they want for things that are not censored. I know some people prefer to stick their noses up and hold what they perceive as the moral high ground, but do consider how lives of hundreds of millions of people will be affected by your actions/inactions.

gowld 7y ago
It's not just censorship. It never was. Dragonfly also includes actively assisting the Chinese Communist Party in identifying and persecuting people who look for information about freedom or for information about crimes committed by the Party/government
- jmeng0122 7y ago
  any article or press to support your claims?
  - lern_too_spel 7y ago
    Searches would be linked to identifiable information for logged in users: https://theintercept.com/2018/09/14/google-china-prototype-links-searches-to-phone-numbers/ https://theintercept.com/2018/09/14/google-china-prototype-l... The Chinese government would be able to access that data through Google's joint venture partner in China who actually controls the data.
  - bduerst 7y ago
    The proposal for dragonfly had two conditions set by the Chinese government - the first was to provide censored search results in compliance with the firewall. The second was to link search queries to user phone numbers, which a director tried to hide and many employees revolted against: https://theintercept.com/2018/09/21/google-suppresses-memo-revealing-plans-to-closely-track-search-users-in-china/ https://theintercept.com/2018/09/21/google-suppresses-memo-r...

gowld 7y ago

The news here is just that Google told the Senate hearing confirmation of the same thing people were saying informally before.

sidibe 7y ago

It's amazing the outrage a project investigating how to comply has generated while Bing is quietly working just fine in China.

cletus 7y ago

Good. Some argue this is just Google following local laws. I say that being legal != being moral and helping the government of China censor and track citizens is not a moral position, law be damned. The amount of internal resistance this got is good evidence of this project not being consistent with the values of most of the people who work there. The fact that leadership tried to hide this project, keep it secret and deny its existence is... disappointing. Then again, I already had the opinion that Sundar is the most overpaid CEO in the world.

alexnewman 7y ago

I have friends at google still working on this.

chollier 7y ago

what about microsoft / bing? they are available in China and no one seems to give them shit compared to google

londons_explore 7y ago
Google employees are very vocal, and will internally protest anything they don't agree with. That protest often gets leaked to the media. Microsoft is run like a regular company where employees just do what they're told.

teknopurge 7y ago

That was fast. Good job Peter.

mnm1 7y ago

So corporate censorship (Google search outside of China) is fine but government censorship (Google search inside China) isn't. Also, government censorship by Western governments (UK, etc.) is fine but government censorship by non western governments (China) is not. I don't see much difference myself but it seems others do.

GrapeDrape 7y ago

And still, not a single fucking clue what the fuck this stupid fucking garbage code name was even supposed to be. Fuck you. Dream up some actual news.

bad_user 7y ago

I'm happy that Dragonfly is being terminated and I'm sure this is also the direct result of all Google employees who objected to it. To the Chinese people here on HN try to understand that this is larger than the welfare of the Chinese. China is now in a position to export its culture to the rest of the world due to its economic strength. It can, for example, force companies like Google to censor information to the rest of the world and this is a fact. How do I know this? Because us EU citizens already have to suffer the US views on sex and nudity, among others and the US has the strongest free speech protections of all countries. The whataboutism on this discussion btw is interesting since this forum would be censored in China and this conversation wouldn't be possible. There's no comparison to be made in terms of free speech. In China you have none. So I regret the situation, but many of us value our liberal freedoms and we don't want China to export its flavor of communism to us. Yes I was born and raised in an ex-communist country, I know communism when I see it, I don't want any and I'm prepared to fight for my freedoms. I do hope to see China become a liberal democracy. But I'm not holding my breath, because I also know what it takes for a revolution to happen and China won't be there for the foreseeable future.

tracker1 7y ago
Agreed... have had several friends and coworkers over the years who are expat Russian and HK, and have no love for communism. Being born in the 70's and coming up in the 80's probably means some bias on my own part. I just don't want anything resembling that level of restriction from any government. I have enough problems with my own (US) govt, let alone adding a more repressive stream.

carapace 7y ago

There is a clash of fundamental values, it's deeper than politics. Technology is driving confrontations with our values, our ideas of what it means to be human. Organlegging was science fiction, now it's happening. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organlegging https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organlegging https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_theft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_theft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_transplantation_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_transplantation_in_China "What kind of future do we want?", is no longer the question, because it's here, now.

dbg31415 7y ago

I'm happy Google is dropping this. I don't want them developing more censorship tech that they can then roll out to the US, or other markets. It should be hard to censor things on the internet, and the less effort that is put into censorship tech, the better off humanity is.

elchupanebre 7y ago

They said they have terminated the project Dragonfly. But did they actually stop working on the censored search for China? And why was the statement made by a PR dude Karan Bhatia instead of Ceasar Sengupta who was supposedly in charge of the project?