8 ms·

> Electronic Communications Privacy Act Orwellian naming conventions are all the rage these days :-) Jerry Yang faced a lot of heat for doing pretty much the s

by zohebv 15y ago

> Electronic Communications Privacy Act Orwellian naming conventions are all the rage these days :-) Jerry Yang faced a lot of heat for doing pretty much the same thing in China. Google seems to reluctant to criticize the US government now, unlike, for e.g., the Chinese government.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
PakG1 15y ago
EXACTLY the same thing. It's a really interesting point. When China does it, they're horrible. When the US does it, what is it? Is there a difference or not? The motivations are quite similar, and one probably can only look at whether the motivations of each country can be justified from a moral standpoint.
- cookiecaper 15y ago
  Perhaps the discontent comes because China is seen as something of an expeditionary market for American search providers. While you can give China the finger and get out, it's not tenable to do that in the US, so one is compelled to play by American rules. I don't necessarily believe that China's status as an expeditionary market makes it worthwhile to stop offering services in that country, just playing devil's advocate I guess.
  - 0x12 15y ago
    Collaboration with a bad government is always optional, you can cease to do business. That's definitely tenable. It takes a lot of balls to do so. Imagine google coming right out and saying: 'Our do no evil motto is our guiding light and we have decided that being forced by the government to act in this manner to prevent our technology from being used to spy on American citizens in ways that we can not in good conscience allow is against our principles. Therefore we will cease operating today.'. I'm trying to imagine the effect of such a move, it strikes me that the ensuing fall-out would probably see the government as the losing party and google re-instated in very short order. Sometimes you have to make a stand, if the same thing was a good enough reason for google to cease to do business in China then maybe it should be good enough to cease doing business in the US.
    - netcan 15y ago
      They could have made more of a fuss over it. Get ideas up in the air about shifting pieces of Google overseas, for example. Once the idea that Google might be locating somewhere else for concern about collaborating with the US government, public concern might have been raised. The reality is that governments do have the ability to dictate a lot. But companies are global now and that means some competition exists. It's old news that countries compete on tax laws but competing on rights and freedoms would be nice too. To a certain extent, they do.
      - 0x12 15y ago
        Google Iceland has a nice ring to it. Also the economy there could use a boost I believe.
    - Cushman 15y ago
      Why even bother to shut down? Google could probably just go "Haha! Fuck you. Who's your closest supervisor in an elected office?" Next day, "<Official> wants Google to share your personal information with the Federal Government" magically becomes the top hit for that name. Bureaucrats and spooks are happy to play this game because they know it never comes back to them. Nobody who has to answer to voters would dare put their name on it-- we're looking for any damn excuse to not vote for the incumbent this cycle. But I guess standing up for us could mean a hit to shareholder value, and some things just aren't worth sacrificing.
      - jbooth 15y ago
        Nobody who has to answer to voters would dare put their name on it? Remember that 99-1 vote for the Patriot Act? The one senator who voted against, Russ Feingold, lost in 2010 to a guy who's campaign slogan revolved heavily around "freedom".
        CWuestefeld 15y ago
        There are many dimensions of freedom. I'll note that Sen. Feingold's name shares a place in "McCain-Feingold", which is a limitation on free speech (some may argue that it's a warranted limitation, but the fact that it is a limitation on freedom is objectively true)

by zohebv 15y ago

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

PakG1 15y ago

EXACTLY the same thing. It's a really interesting point. When China does it, they're horrible. When the US does it, what is it? Is there a difference or not? The motivations are quite similar, and one probably can only look at whether the motivations of each country can be justified from a moral standpoint.

cookiecaper 15y ago
Perhaps the discontent comes because China is seen as something of an expeditionary market for American search providers. While you can give China the finger and get out, it's not tenable to do that in the US, so one is compelled to play by American rules. I don't necessarily believe that China's status as an expeditionary market makes it worthwhile to stop offering services in that country, just playing devil's advocate I guess.
- 0x12 15y ago
  Collaboration with a bad government is always optional, you can cease to do business. That's definitely tenable. It takes a lot of balls to do so. Imagine google coming right out and saying: 'Our do no evil motto is our guiding light and we have decided that being forced by the government to act in this manner to prevent our technology from being used to spy on American citizens in ways that we can not in good conscience allow is against our principles. Therefore we will cease operating today.'. I'm trying to imagine the effect of such a move, it strikes me that the ensuing fall-out would probably see the government as the losing party and google re-instated in very short order. Sometimes you have to make a stand, if the same thing was a good enough reason for google to cease to do business in China then maybe it should be good enough to cease doing business in the US.
  - netcan 15y ago
    They could have made more of a fuss over it. Get ideas up in the air about shifting pieces of Google overseas, for example. Once the idea that Google might be locating somewhere else for concern about collaborating with the US government, public concern might have been raised. The reality is that governments do have the ability to dictate a lot. But companies are global now and that means some competition exists. It's old news that countries compete on tax laws but competing on rights and freedoms would be nice too. To a certain extent, they do.
    - 0x12 15y ago
      Google Iceland has a nice ring to it. Also the economy there could use a boost I believe.
  - Cushman 15y ago
    Why even bother to shut down? Google could probably just go "Haha! Fuck you. Who's your closest supervisor in an elected office?" Next day, "<Official> wants Google to share your personal information with the Federal Government" magically becomes the top hit for that name. Bureaucrats and spooks are happy to play this game because they know it never comes back to them. Nobody who has to answer to voters would dare put their name on it-- we're looking for any damn excuse to not vote for the incumbent this cycle. But I guess standing up for us could mean a hit to shareholder value, and some things just aren't worth sacrificing.
    - jbooth 15y ago
      Nobody who has to answer to voters would dare put their name on it? Remember that 99-1 vote for the Patriot Act? The one senator who voted against, Russ Feingold, lost in 2010 to a guy who's campaign slogan revolved heavily around "freedom".
      - CWuestefeld 15y ago
        There are many dimensions of freedom. I'll note that Sen. Feingold's name shares a place in "McCain-Feingold", which is a limitation on free speech (some may argue that it's a warranted limitation, but the fact that it is a limitation on freedom is objectively true)