3 ms·

Google’s executives would very much like to operate in China, only they faced public pressure (the term to search for is “project dragonfly”). I won’t be surpr

Google’s executives would very much like to operate in China, only they faced public pressure (the term to search for is “project dragonfly”). I won’t be surprised if they’ll retry to enter China soon.

robertlagrant 3y ago
Public pressure vs $1tn. Hmm.
- snotrockets 3y ago
  Right now, part of that pressuring public also includes elected representatives in positions of some power over Google, which is quite the stick. Of course, such elected are replaced every few years.
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    So it's not public pressure, it's powerful people who don't like Google.
    - snotrockets 3y ago
      Those people are beholden to public pressure. That's how representative governments tend to work.
      - robertlagrant 3y ago
        Sure, but the claim was that they faced public pressure. The reality is likely not that millions of people marched to put pressure on Google, nor to ensure their representatives knew what to do in this situation, but that some powerful people (who happen to be elected representatives, maybe) decided that Google should be dissuaded from this path, and that's what happened.
seanmcdirmid 3y ago
They faced internal pressure from employees as I remember it. They shutdown their Chinese sites after the PLA was caught hacking Gmail accounts in Hong Kong, but this was when Paige and Sergey were more involved (being from formerly authoritarian communist countries).
- snotrockets 3y ago
  You didn’t bother to search, so let me paste the relevant content for you here: > The Dragonfly project was an Internet search engine prototype created by Google that was designed to be compatible with China's state censorship provisions. > The public learned of Dragonfly's existence in August 2018, when The Intercept leaked an internal memo written by a Google employee about the project. > […] > However, according to employees, work on Dragonfly was still continuing as of March 2019, with some 100 people still allocated to it. > In July 2019, Google announced that work on Dragonfly had been terminated. (From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonfly_(search_engine) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonfly_(search_engine), literally the first Google search result on that keyword)
  - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
    None of that conflicts with what I said.
    - snotrockets 3y ago
      Your comment suggests rank and file had power to shut it down (they didn't: it was the public scrutiny), or that it was shut down in response to happening a decade before it was shut down.
      - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
        From what I remember the internal pressure was pretty intense, that the story about employees being against it is what the press covered and what caused the public scrutiny. You could claim that employee opinion would have been meaningless without public coverage of that opinion, but that is another argument all together.

robertlagrant 3y ago

Public pressure vs $1tn. Hmm.

snotrockets 3y ago
Right now, part of that pressuring public also includes elected representatives in positions of some power over Google, which is quite the stick. Of course, such elected are replaced every few years.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  So it's not public pressure, it's powerful people who don't like Google.
  - snotrockets 3y ago
    Those people are beholden to public pressure. That's how representative governments tend to work.
    - robertlagrant 3y ago
      Sure, but the claim was that they faced public pressure. The reality is likely not that millions of people marched to put pressure on Google, nor to ensure their representatives knew what to do in this situation, but that some powerful people (who happen to be elected representatives, maybe) decided that Google should be dissuaded from this path, and that's what happened.

seanmcdirmid 3y ago

They faced internal pressure from employees as I remember it. They shutdown their Chinese sites after the PLA was caught hacking Gmail accounts in Hong Kong, but this was when Paige and Sergey were more involved (being from formerly authoritarian communist countries).

snotrockets 3y ago
You didn’t bother to search, so let me paste the relevant content for you here: > The Dragonfly project was an Internet search engine prototype created by Google that was designed to be compatible with China's state censorship provisions. > The public learned of Dragonfly's existence in August 2018, when The Intercept leaked an internal memo written by a Google employee about the project. > […] > However, according to employees, work on Dragonfly was still continuing as of March 2019, with some 100 people still allocated to it. > In July 2019, Google announced that work on Dragonfly had been terminated. (From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonfly_(search_engine) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonfly_(search_engine), literally the first Google search result on that keyword)
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  None of that conflicts with what I said.
  - snotrockets 3y ago
    Your comment suggests rank and file had power to shut it down (they didn't: it was the public scrutiny), or that it was shut down in response to happening a decade before it was shut down.
    - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
      From what I remember the internal pressure was pretty intense, that the story about employees being against it is what the press covered and what caused the public scrutiny. You could claim that employee opinion would have been meaningless without public coverage of that opinion, but that is another argument all together.