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.
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.
I truly admire you for taking a stance and fighting for what you believe in. Figuring out what you can and can't stand for morally is a difficult task. I hope others can feel inspired by you to examine whether they can, in good conscience, continue to support Google.
I am not advocating defeatism. I am simply trying to be realistic. It is a fact that within the tech community Google has always been given more leniency than their competitors, even when they're all guilty of the same crimes. The tech community assumes the best when it comes to Google and gives them the benefit of the doubt, even when they don't deserve it. Google's executives recognize this and have exploited this goodwill to further maximize their profit margins again and again, knowing that they can always quell any community outrage with empty promises to change and carefully crafted PR statements. Before it was Oracle, but now it's Facebook, Amazon, and Uber--As long as these companies exist, Google just needs to be the "lesser evil" and they'll always be excused.
Real, meaningful change would require a paradigm shift in the tech community that simply isn't going to happen while they're still overwhelmingly viewed as the most desirable company to work at and people still believe the "don't be evil" nonsense. The Google Kool-Aid is real and the tech community is drowning in it.
I wholeheartedly salute you.
The individual willing to stand up for a principle at great personal expense is the kind of hero the world needs more of. While I admire your resolve, I can't help but feel pessimistic about the cause. My view formed by my own personal experience is that the average consumer is not even remotely interested in understanding the ethical implications of Google's various business practices, let alone taking an informed moral stance and adjusting their behaviour on its basis.
Dragonfly is only the tip of the iceberg for me when it comes to Google's unethical behaviour, I've made a concerted effort to avoid allowing Google to earn money from my use of their products. Unfortunately, the masses are miles away from even being concerned about their own personal privacy, let alone being concerned over foreign tyranny. They'll continue using Google services, and google will be able to do largely as it wishes.
Also, I'm stumped trying to think of an example of where a nation-state rectified their unethical behaviour on a moral basis alone. Picketing the Chinese government will not change things, nor will Google refusing to do business with them, unfortunately. We should still boycott companies who support such tyranny however.
I admire you courage but have you considered the possibility that you might be wrong on this? Probability that China would change anything because of lack of Google products is about zero. In fact, not having Google benefits them even more because now there is no one reviewing of any censorship rules. If Google is there (1) they can minimize censorship as much as possible by pushing back frequently (2) people in China benefits from access to much better search and subsequently gets better educated over time.
Consider the fact that vast majority of search queries will not be affected by the censorship. Your actions are depriving billion+ people from these queries. Think of all the things kids could have found out about science and western literature by better search that they currently aren't.
Finally, I would to leave a note on cultural aspects. Being in western world, we assume that every culture in the world wants democracy. We firmly believe that every culture resents censorship. From my contact with many asian folks, I have changed my assumptions and such belief. Chinese culture is fundamentally different. Government is not looked at some agency that people allowed to govern but rather an agency that is charted to protect culture even if it is at the expense of individualism. My theory is that even if Chinese government was toppled, the replacement would still have same characteristics because that is the expectation that people have from their government.
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.
Google already operates in multiple countries with histories of and ongoing human rights violations. What has triggered such a reaction from you about expansion into China vs their operation in say Saudi Arabia which was ongoing while you were at Google?
What you've done is admirable. If more people were willing to value other human beings over their own comfort like you, the world would truly be a better place.
You're a kind person. You'll probably be alright economically, but if you ever feel socially excluded for what you've done, remember that what you did was right.
"they'll also have complete control over them"
"But why should Googlers care?"
This is a dumb take. Googlers are the one reporting/protesting all of these things. This is a very different situation than Facebook where most of the leaking has been external. It's also different than HN's reaction to Apple, which apparently can whatever it wants to its Chinese users.
The world is not black and white, it is gray. And some companies are more active than others in trying to find a balance between morality and realism.
1. Google would be absolutely fine if they do not expand into China. They would not collapse or lose their competitive edge if they refrained from doing so. You've worked at Google for over a decade so you should know this is true.
2. Google's censored search engine would absolutely facilitate Xi Jinping ability to censor the Chinese people and would set a dangerous precedent for other governments to make similar demands.
Google, which is already one of the wealthiest and most secure companies in the world, is developing a tool for suppression and bending to the demands of a dictator in the name of profit. Perhaps you have a different moral stance than I do, Ari, but I see nothing "gray" about this blind pursuit of money at the cost of over a billion people's free will.
It's especially interesting how many times people quote "dont be evil" as a real thing that somehow made the company extra special. It was nothing but a PR statement (and the words are still there) but it shows how big the Google cult/bubble is that refuses to acknowledge that the company has always been just like any other massive conglomerate.
If we have gotten to the point where people are unwilling to trade a six figure job with free sushi for a six figure job without free sushi to stand up for what is right, we have bigger problems.
Yeah, I think this is how a company achieves anything nefarious. Sensational media and people are fickle; they consume a few clickbaity articles and then forget them. Meanwhile, companies keep pursuing the goal. Again, their motto has been Keep Evil Undetectable, and we have to tell ourselves that this is a long and ongoing battle. But I'd say that democracy has been always a long and ongoing battle: When you stop paying an attention, you lose.
Sounds like sour grapes from a Facebook worker. I used to work at google. I loved working there, but I wasn't a prisoner of luxury, and I left to go to a startup that didn't promise me the world. After I left I somehow resisted the urge to try to go back. It's a great company but there are lots of things that attract people to jobs.
Have you ever worked at one of these "cushy" jobs? I've worked at a few. The sweet benefits wear off quick. There are usually one or two you really love, and you can easily find them in other companies.
That’s fine and good now but when you start to erode trust the relationship becomes transactional. People loose enthusiasm for the job, stop going the extra mile, makes it harder to hire the best, and it puts the culture at risk. It ultimately accelerates a companies time to sunset and with a few bad quarters those benefits start getting taken aaay. You’ve hollowed out your company and have nothing left. Google was better off taking the high road and prospering of the culture and good will rather than a buck.
I think people protesting about this miss the point:
- It is incredibly valuable to know what China wants censored.
- It is the people of China that needs to be empowered to change their laws, outside force from a foreign country will only invite conflict.
(Note that I have no respect for Google because they are a scummy company - not for censoring in China but for spying on people everywhere, regardless of their citizenship).
This is one more great reassign to completely divorce health benefits from employment.
People should not be making the choice between the health and possibly lives of their family and working for an employer destroying the fabric of society.
I can’t believe I am saying this but pendulum has swung so far in the wrong direction that something needs to give. Until some sort of universal safety net is established that at least guarantees the simple living, we will keep on seeing lack of pushback on these moral issues
I resigned from Google and I don't care about any of those perks. You can use money to buy that stuff. I was happy when they left China and will be sad to see them go back. I don't own any GOOG anymore, so via con dios.
I still don't get what logic is used to arrive at the conclusion that Google deploying search in China should be stopped. Everyone I have seen simply assumes it.
Everyday to work I pass a huge Bayer building. A very unethical company, but pays excellent and people in masses enter the building each day. If you pay enough, you will always find people working for you whatever you do.
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.
Do you accept money for your work? Odds are that some of that money was gained through less than 100% ethical means -- if not directly by the person/company you got the money from, then perhaps by the person/company they got it from, etc. At some point down the line, some of it might be called "dirty money" or maybe even "blood money".
So what do you do? Do you stop accepting money because you have to be 100% ethical?
Do you stop interacting with any company that's not 100% ethical, with any person that's not 100% ethical, with any country that's not 100% ethical? Do you devote your life to protesting these unethical individuals, companies, and countries?
Some people do, but they are a vanishingly small number -- so small that if all positive change relied just on them, nothing would change.
The rest of us choose to make compromises, and we're not 100% pure. But that doesn't mean that we can't protest anything unless we protest everything, and it doesn't mean we can't accomplish some good while unfortunately participating to some extent in a non-prefectly ethical system.
right but the choices of what crosses the line seem arbitrary and often people protest things that aren't nearly as bad as things they are complicit in. Its moreso to make themselves feel better and maybe out of boredom.
> 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.
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.
Taking a moral stand requires resources, and is therefore more of a privilege than a right. Implicit in this argument is that one must choose their battlefront carefully, because it is usually impossible for one person to fight on all fronts at once. One individual might be an exceptional engineer, and to take a moral stand this individual will refuse to work at certain companies. Another individual might be a wealthy investor, and for the same reason refuse to invest in certain companies. Finally, some people may try to avoid buying products from a particular country of origin.
Pressure on countless different fronts from countless different people for the same moral cause can, and often does, lead to change. Hence, it is not hypocritical at all - to the contrary, it is pragmatic and effective. It's simply individuals doing what they can for something they believe in, and most of them know that they cannot win the battle alone. If it's a worthy cause, such people should be encouraged.
To call the individual who takes a stand on one but not all fronts a hypocrite is, ironically enough, a way of discouraging people from taking a stand at all.
Why do you think censored search engine is bad? All other search engine in China have same censorship but worse quality. Why it's bad to have another censored search engine with higher quality?
Or do you want to say you can't have better search engine until the whole censorship is overhauled? If that's the case, why not first stop use oil from Middle East until the war is complete ended there?
My objection isn't even the censorship (I mean, I object to that too, but to a lesser degree).
My primary objection is that Google is (was?) arranging the system so that every user is identified and, if they search for something forbidden, are reported to the government.
There's nothing morally wrong with being hypocritical. Everyone is hypocritical. Surely it's better to be inconsistently principled than consistently unprincipled?
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.
Because Resisting China is so iconic, it now becomes Google's identity. Now they have some pragmatic board members what to go into that market once again, but find themselves unable to do so, because it is enshrined by many of its employees as its glorious legacy.
I'd say forget about Chinese market, let aside Google's own identity struggle, Chinese government, under Xi, is much more stringent about its iron fist control over internet. Also the internet demographics have evolved. When Google quits China, it was hailed by many secretly as hero, now the ultra-nationalist new generation of netizens will welcome Google by their endless outrage against Western hypocrisies. To them, Google isn't the gold child of Western technologism, it is just a homeless dog who is disliked by its new master.
Nobody gives a shit about companies building products for China. People are upset about building censorship and logging tools that will be used to suppress free speech and kill/intern dissidents.
Supporting Chinese businesses by buying from them and being against selling suppression tools to the Chinese government are both sides of the same coin.
You’re conflating “made in China” with “made in America for suppressing the Chinese”. This is textbook propaganda to make the Chinese government and its citizens seem like a unified entity.
“Why would you buy a slice of Pizza in New York and simultaneously complain about the Belgians selling guns to the US government?”
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.
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.
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.
Google's motto "Don't be evil" is not rigorous. Huawei claims something similar recently. The problem is who defines what's good or evil? Every group of people think they are noble, and the enemies are evil.
This post should be at the very top. What exactly has Google been telling its employees it stood for and what exactly can Google provide that others cannot? I am surprised the Chinese military would even allow this.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
Incredibly naive in my opinion.
Google is not a democracy, its a pulicly traded company. It's no better than a dictatorship. Further more, a developer does not 'influence' the Chinese government in any way, which is what Google will be beholden to.
The good developers are better leaving to contribute elsewhere. At least when Google is nothing but amoral, unethical, grreedy developers with no social conscience then we can start treating the company as it deserves.
>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.
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-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.
> 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.
> 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/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-stra... >
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?
> [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.
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.
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...
Readit News
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.
Source: I publicly resigned from Google over dragonfly and dedicated months of my life and income to fighting it.
I am not advocating defeatism. I am simply trying to be realistic. It is a fact that within the tech community Google has always been given more leniency than their competitors, even when they're all guilty of the same crimes. The tech community assumes the best when it comes to Google and gives them the benefit of the doubt, even when they don't deserve it. Google's executives recognize this and have exploited this goodwill to further maximize their profit margins again and again, knowing that they can always quell any community outrage with empty promises to change and carefully crafted PR statements. Before it was Oracle, but now it's Facebook, Amazon, and Uber--As long as these companies exist, Google just needs to be the "lesser evil" and they'll always be excused.
Real, meaningful change would require a paradigm shift in the tech community that simply isn't going to happen while they're still overwhelmingly viewed as the most desirable company to work at and people still believe the "don't be evil" nonsense. The Google Kool-Aid is real and the tech community is drowning in it.
Consider the fact that vast majority of search queries will not be affected by the censorship. Your actions are depriving billion+ people from these queries. Think of all the things kids could have found out about science and western literature by better search that they currently aren't.
Finally, I would to leave a note on cultural aspects. Being in western world, we assume that every culture in the world wants democracy. We firmly believe that every culture resents censorship. From my contact with many asian folks, I have changed my assumptions and such belief. Chinese culture is fundamentally different. Government is not looked at some agency that people allowed to govern but rather an agency that is charted to protect culture even if it is at the expense of individualism. My theory is that even if Chinese government was toppled, the replacement would still have same characteristics because that is the expectation that people have from their government.
> 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.
You're a kind person. You'll probably be alright economically, but if you ever feel socially excluded for what you've done, remember that what you did was right.
Deleted Comment
your impact is larger than you think - thank you
Rather than fight it, wouldn't it have been more effective to try to replace it?
A couple of really smart folks with some funding can found "NotGoogle, and actually not evil."
Breaking Google's monopoly would do far more good than just taking on this single issue.
This is a dumb take. Googlers are the one reporting/protesting all of these things. This is a very different situation than Facebook where most of the leaking has been external. It's also different than HN's reaction to Apple, which apparently can whatever it wants to its Chinese users.
The world is not black and white, it is gray. And some companies are more active than others in trying to find a balance between morality and realism.
1. Google would be absolutely fine if they do not expand into China. They would not collapse or lose their competitive edge if they refrained from doing so. You've worked at Google for over a decade so you should know this is true.
2. Google's censored search engine would absolutely facilitate Xi Jinping ability to censor the Chinese people and would set a dangerous precedent for other governments to make similar demands.
Google, which is already one of the wealthiest and most secure companies in the world, is developing a tool for suppression and bending to the demands of a dictator in the name of profit. Perhaps you have a different moral stance than I do, Ari, but I see nothing "gray" about this blind pursuit of money at the cost of over a billion people's free will.
This story is literally about employees uncovering evidence of ongoing work and pressuring execs to stop it by going public with the information.
https://www.cia.gov/news-information/featured-story-archive/...
It's really interesting. Basically if you can't fight back , just resort to sabotage.
They discuss things like:
- having extra meetings because meetings are inefficient.
- promote lazy and mean people and demote effective and committed people because it impacts morale.
I think this might be a somewhat effective way to fight back in some of these situations.
Don't like your companies new policy on China?
More meetings! Also, promote Bob.
I may very well be optimistic but I don't think Dragonfly will ever be released.
I agree. Google's only care is for profit.
They can try to hide it, disguise it, make it easy to forget, at the end of the day if they don't make money everything is over.
- It is incredibly valuable to know what China wants censored.
- It is the people of China that needs to be empowered to change their laws, outside force from a foreign country will only invite conflict.
(Note that I have no respect for Google because they are a scummy company - not for censoring in China but for spying on people everywhere, regardless of their citizenship).
People should not be making the choice between the health and possibly lives of their family and working for an employer destroying the fabric of society.
Only if the Chinese let them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses
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.
Do you accept money for your work? Odds are that some of that money was gained through less than 100% ethical means -- if not directly by the person/company you got the money from, then perhaps by the person/company they got it from, etc. At some point down the line, some of it might be called "dirty money" or maybe even "blood money".
So what do you do? Do you stop accepting money because you have to be 100% ethical?
Do you stop interacting with any company that's not 100% ethical, with any person that's not 100% ethical, with any country that's not 100% ethical? Do you devote your life to protesting these unethical individuals, companies, and countries?
Some people do, but they are a vanishingly small number -- so small that if all positive change relied just on them, nothing would change.
The rest of us choose to make compromises, and we're not 100% pure. But that doesn't mean that we can't protest anything unless we protest everything, and it doesn't mean we can't accomplish some good while unfortunately participating to some extent in a non-prefectly ethical system.
Deleted Comment
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.
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.
Pressure on countless different fronts from countless different people for the same moral cause can, and often does, lead to change. Hence, it is not hypocritical at all - to the contrary, it is pragmatic and effective. It's simply individuals doing what they can for something they believe in, and most of them know that they cannot win the battle alone. If it's a worthy cause, such people should be encouraged.
To call the individual who takes a stand on one but not all fronts a hypocrite is, ironically enough, a way of discouraging people from taking a stand at all.
Or do you want to say you can't have better search engine until the whole censorship is overhauled? If that's the case, why not first stop use oil from Middle East until the war is complete ended there?
E.g. 1. Right to be forgotten. 2. DMCA. (differing views on this). 3. Russia (?)
My primary objection is that Google is (was?) arranging the system so that every user is identified and, if they search for something forbidden, are reported to the government.
I'd say forget about Chinese market, let aside Google's own identity struggle, Chinese government, under Xi, is much more stringent about its iron fist control over internet. Also the internet demographics have evolved. When Google quits China, it was hailed by many secretly as hero, now the ultra-nationalist new generation of netizens will welcome Google by their endless outrage against Western hypocrisies. To them, Google isn't the gold child of Western technologism, it is just a homeless dog who is disliked by its new master.
Deleted Comment
Supporting Chinese businesses by buying from them and being against selling suppression tools to the Chinese government are both sides of the same coin.
You’re conflating “made in China” with “made in America for suppressing the Chinese”. This is textbook propaganda to make the Chinese government and its citizens seem like a unified entity.
“Why would you buy a slice of Pizza in New York and simultaneously complain about the Belgians selling guns to the US government?”
They are not doing "something", they are building an oppression machine.
Your comparison between consuming Chinese goods and actively aiding the oppressing system is a false equivalence fallacy.
Deleted Comment
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.
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.
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.
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.
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-...
Incredibly naive in my opinion.
Google is not a democracy, its a pulicly traded company. It's no better than a dictatorship. Further more, a developer does not 'influence' the Chinese government in any way, which is what Google will be beholden to.
The good developers are better leaving to contribute elsewhere. At least when Google is nothing but amoral, unethical, grreedy developers with no social conscience then we can start treating the company as it deserves.
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.
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-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-deman...
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.
Is that sad though? Really? I'm not exactly tearing up at the thought.
Deleted Comment
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-stra... >
Is Bing less bad than Dragonfly in terms of censorship? or is it also bad but engineers in Microsoft care little about that?
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
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.
Source: work at google, for ~8 years
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...