Remember when Google removed the "don't be evil" clause of their mission statement? Yeah.....

[Master Disaster]

A former top Google employee has submitted a letter to the US Senate outlining what he claims are plans for Google's expansion into China.

Quote

A former Google employee has warned of the firm's "disturbing" plans in China, in a letter to US lawmakers.

 

Jack Poulson, who had been a senior researcher at the company until resigning in August, wrote that he was fearful of Google's ambitions.

 

His letter alleges Google's work on a Chinese product - codenamed Dragonfly - would aid Beijing's efforts to censor and monitor its citizens online.

 

Google has said its work in China to date has been "exploratory".

Mr Poulson claims Google are planning to create tools to help the Chinese government monitor and censor the Chinese population.

Quote

The letter alleges Google is working on:

• A prototype interface designed to allow a Chinese joint venture company to search for a given user's search queries based on their phone number
• An extensive censorship blacklist developed in accordance with Chinese government demands. Among others, it contained the English term "human rights", the Mandarin terms for 'student protest' and 'Nobel prize', and very large numbers of phrases involving 'Xi Jinping' and other members of the CCP
• Explicit code to ensure only Chinese government-approved air quality data would be returned in response to Chinese users' search

Obviously Mr Poulson isn't very happy about these alleged plans and neither are the hundreds of other Google employees who signed an open letter protesting project dragonfly.

Quote

Mr Poulson said the sum of these efforts amounted to a "catastrophic failure" of Google's internal policies on privacy - as well as going against assurances made to the US trade regulator regarding data protection measures in its products.

 

"Dragonfly is part of a broad pattern of unaccountable decision making across the tech industry," Mr Poulson wrote.

 

Mr Poulson's letter follows a joint statement signed by hundreds of current Google employees against Dragonfly sent last month.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/technology-45653035

 

Ouch Google. I know money talks but a western business should not be allowed to get involved with censorship in another country.

 

[DrMacintosh]

Its unfortunate how many companies fall victim to the potential market of China but don't care about compromising on morals or even their own services enough to change their mind about bending to every whim of "The Peoples Republic" of China.

[Jurrunio]

That's what happens when companies treat priceless things literally.

[captain_to_fire]

5 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

I know money talks but a western business should not be allowed to get involved with censorship in another country.

Apple did it. Apple removed all VPN apps from the Chinese App Store to limit its citizens' access to western media (can be circumvented) and they have moved user data of Chinese citizens to a state run telecom. [here] [here]

[BuckGup]

3 minutes ago, captain_to_fire said:

Apple did it. Apple removed all VPN apps from the Chinese App Store to limit its citizens' access to western media (can be circumvented) and they have moved user data of Chinese citizens to a state run telecom. [here] [here]

I highly doubt any VPN on the appstore would have gotten through the chinese firewall. You are looking at making your own to do that or paying money for an outside service which wouldn't have been blocked

[AntiTrust]

1 minute ago, captain_to_fire said:

Apple did it. Apple removed all VPN apps from the Chinese App Store to limit its citizens' access to western media (can be circumvented) and they have moved user data of Chinese citizens to a state run telecom. [here] [here]

Yeah but they probably risked having their app store in china being shut down if they didn't. Its more like complying with regulations than being an active participant in the oppression. Which is what google is doing with this project, potentially using their workforce of thousands of the most brilliant tech minds int he world onto designing a system of government tracking. 

 

really really dark turn for a company to take. It'd be like if a large western country sold dangerous military weaponry to countries with questionable human rights records... 

[Teddy07]

I don´t have a problem with that.

[EPENEX]

It's unethical, but if it makes them money I don't see why they wouldn't do it. Google isn't a nice company trying defend your freedom, it's never been about that.

[Bananasplit_00]

does anyone actiually like google anymore? or are we all just stuck with their shit because its too late to change?

[captain_to_fire]

7 minutes ago, BuckGup said:

I highly doubt any VPN on the appstore would have gotten through the chinese firewall. You are looking at making your own to do that or paying money for an outside service which wouldn't have been blocked

there are ways of bypassing the Chinese great firewall (can't talks about that)

[Godlygamer23]

The "don't be evil" clause was arbitrary anyway. Define evil. What is evil to you may not be evil to Google or other corporations.

[Sniperfox47]

Oh no! Google is planning to expand into a country by doing what they are required to do in that country and what every other search engine in that country is already doing! Heavens no! Think of the children!

 

(/S)

 

At the end of the day while this may not help the situation this won't hurt literally anything... Google's been resisting Chinese expansion because of this for... How long now? Over a decade since they got kicked out? It hasn't done anything to change the mind of the Chinese government and really has done absolutely nothing to solve the issue. The only one being hurt by Google not expanding into China is Google, and Google following these requirements that all other search providers are following anyways does nothing to further the harm.

[iRileyx]

I remember it well as I posted the news topic here

 

 

Everyone saying it didn't mean anything blah blah blah... hmm, seems there was more to it afterall.

[Guest]

33 minutes ago, Godlygamer23 said:

The "don't be evil" clause was arbitrary anyway. Define evil. What is evil to you may not be evil to Google or other corporations.

Suppression of free speech and spying on all your citizens. Pretty evil to most people

[Godlygamer23]

19 minutes ago, RorzNZ said:

Suppression of free speech and spying on all your citizens. Pretty evil to most people

As I said, Google may disagree, and thus the clause was pointless.

[D13H4RD]

Sometimes, I wonder what exactly is the benefit for all this, especially when China has been grooming their own services (however biased that may be) for over a year now.

 

Access to the Google Play store?

[Brooksie359]

1 hour ago, EPENEX said:

It's unethical, but if it makes them money I don't see why they wouldn't do it. Google isn't a nice company trying defend your freedom, it's never been about that.

There is an extent where I would agree but at some point the line is crossed where something is to unethical to condone for the sake if money. Basically developing code to allow for a 1984 like reality. I mean if an military defense company started selling weapons to isis in the name of profits I am pretty sure you would think differently. 

[Tech Enthusiast]

Well, we may not like it, but this may actually be better than not having google search at all, maybe?

 

The Chinese government has strict rules for stuff that is allowed. So Google kinda has to follow that, or miss out on 3-4x as many customers than the US has.

Let's face it: China is much more valuable than the US. Big companies have to get in there.

 

Do we have to like what the government does? No.

Can we stop it from happening? No.

Can we hope that Google is doing a better job at helping those Chinese people then their government would? Yes.

 

I kinda think this is better for the people than not doing it. So I may be alone here, but I actually consider this a good thing to do by Google. It would happen anyways, just in a much more sucky way. (And without money for Google). So,...

[Jito463]

3 hours ago, Master Disaster said:

An extensive censorship blacklist developed in accordance with Chinese government demands. Among others, it contained the English term "human rights", the Mandarin terms for 'student protest' and 'Nobel prize', and very large numbers of phrases involving 'Xi Jinping' and other members of the CCP

But does it ban Winnie the Pooh?

[Tech_Dreamer]

people forget that it's a private company with it's own policies , don't expect any firm to keep an open standard . 

[Trik'Stari]

I'm going to say it.

 

The US government and it's people, and all peoples of the west, need to break all economic ties with the Chinese government until such time as they address their human rights issues. We need to pressure other UN members to do the same.

 

We have to decide which is more important. Our morality, or our convenience.

 

This will not be easy. It would in fact be quite difficult. But we need to stop ignoring their blatant human rights violations, and downright evil actions against their own people.

 

I suspect that if this does not happen, we can expect the exact same things happening in China right now, to slowly creep into our own societies. I fear for our future.

 

18 minutes ago, Tech_Dreamer said:

people forget that it's a private company with it's own policies , don't expect any firm to keep an open standard . 

While I understand your intended statement, I feel the need to remind everyone that publicly traded companies are NOT "private companies", by legal definition.

 

Create enough backlash over shit like this, and the shareholders, whom are publicly known, and anyone can be apart of, will put a stop to it.

[imreloadin]

1 hour ago, Trik'Stari said:

I'm going to say it.

 

The US government and it's people, and all peoples of the west, need to break all economic ties with the Chinese government until such time as they address their human rights issues. We need to pressure other UN members to do the same.

 

We have to decide which is more important. Our morality, or our convenience.

 

This will not be easy. It would in fact be quite difficult. But we need to stop ignoring their blatant human rights violations, and downright evil actions against their own people.

 

I suspect that if this does not happen, we can expect the exact same things happening in China right now, to slowly creep into our own societies. I fear for our future.

 

While I understand your intended statement, I feel the need to remind everyone that publicly traded companies are NOT "private companies", by legal definition.

 

Create enough backlash over shit like this, and the shareholders, whom are publicly known, and anyone can be apart of, will put a stop to it.

Wooo! Yeah! Bring on the global economic collapse that this would cause

[kilgore_T]

y'all think china is more "evil" or commits more human rights violations than Europe the uk or the Us?

 

you all trippin'

[asus killer]

9 hours ago, Master Disaster said:

 

Ouch Google. I know money talks but a western business should not be allowed to get involved with censorship in another country.

 

Google did the same in the US with Prism and the NSA. So nothing new really

[Master Disaster]

22 minutes ago, kilgore_T said:

y'all think china is more "evil" or commits more human rights violations than Europe the uk or the Us?

 

you all trippin'

Well I could be wrong here but I'm fairly sure none of the government's you mentioned were responsible for the mass murder of upto 10,000 students who were peacefully demonstrating by ordering troops to shoot with assault rifles and run them down with tanks.

 

Then again, neither is China apparently. Btw if I disappear after this post you know where I went.