Ouch. It must be really fun for Googlers to hear their company is working so hard to repress dissidents trying to reveal its secret project to help China repress dissidents.
Google Suppresses Memo Revealing Plans to Closely Track Search Users in China
21–30 of 315 posts
Re: Google Suppresses Memo Revealing Plans to Closely Track Search Users in China
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many google engineers already knew that a great deal of information was being collected on them.
But this will bring home the reality of how it can be used against them. Just as they have helped to gather information that could be turned against ordinary people very easily.
Everyone knows that you can be fired or worse if you're caught leaking. It's part of employee training and there are many reminders.
(Clearly, it's not working, but this is a wake up call for nobody.)
Re: Google Suppresses Memo Revealing Plans to Closely Track Search Users in China
#23Google's new internal motto must now be: "Be more evil."
Re: Google Suppresses Memo Revealing Plans to Closely Track Search Users in China
#24>Emails demanding deletion of the memo contained “pixel trackers” that notified human resource managers when their messages had been read, recipients determined. This seems like the worst part (not that the rest is not bad), anyone has an idea of what this "pixel trackers" are and how they actually work?
Pixel trackers are just small embedded images in the email that when they are fetched from a server, the server logs it. Pretty simple way to track whether or not someone has opened an email. It's my understanding that gmail however downloads all images and then serves them from Google servers to avoid this issue entirely. Traditional email clients like Outlook/Thunderbird are susceptible to this kind of attack. That…
Variants of "pixel trackers" still work fine on Gmail despite this. To this day a lot of marketing, recruiters and others are tracking when you open their message on Gmail.
Re: Google Suppresses Memo Revealing Plans to Closely Track Search Users in China
#25Genuine question: why is there not more outrage over Bing working in China? Surely there's as much user tracking/censorship as Google is doing?
Microsoft and Bing never started with the mantra of "Don't be evil". Microsoft also has a much more established history of working with different government agencies and foreign governments. The perceived contrast from what people expect from Google and what Google is doing now is just that much more glaring/obvious.
And that is part of the reason why Microsoft has been hated/less trusted than Google for so long (and still is).
Google is making a very big mistake ruining this image and supposedly core principles with the actions it's been taking in the past couple of years. They won't recover for decades from this, just like Microsoft still hasn't fully.
Google's "Don't be evil" has been a huge branding asset, but it seems Google has been too eager to step all over it and throw it in the garbage lately. I wonder if it will be worth it. I hope it won't be.
These days I distrust almost every move Google makes by default, and I imagine there is a growing number of people like me. Google may think "eh, so what, we'll just lose a few percent of our users, but gain all of those juicy killer machines and censorship contracts instead," but now people like me will also be first in line to support governmental action against the company (GDPR, etc), while before I would've been the first in line to defend it. So Google won't be losing just users or even advocates, but it's also turning them into vocal enemies - all in the name of continuing to grow those quarterly profits.
Re: Google Suppresses Memo Revealing Plans to Closely Track Search Users in China
#26Well sure, they censor/manipulate their users, why wouldn’t they do the same to their employees?
That fiasco earlier this year with James Damore comes to mind.
Re: Google Suppresses Memo Revealing Plans to Closely Track Search Users in China
#27Genuine question: why is there not more outrage over Bing working in China? Surely there's as much user tracking/censorship as Google is doing?
Some at Microsoft, especially foreigners working in China, had some issues about it, but Microsoft has always been really consistent about how it operates in China, which, for better or worse, has always been close to the desires of the Chinese government.
Re: Google Suppresses Memo Revealing Plans to Closely Track Search Users in China
#28>Blacklisted search terms on a prototype of the search engine include “human rights”
If there was any remaining debate about Google being something like a “good company,” I hope this will settle it. I’m sure there are many thoughtful and ethical individual employees (such as those who circulated and leaked this memo), but that isn’t represented in executive decision making or the company’s general direction.
Re: Google Suppresses Memo Revealing Plans to Closely Track Search Users in China
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
Microsoft and Bing never started with the mantra of "Don't be evil". Microsoft also has a much more established history of working with different government agencies and foreign governments. The perceived contrast from what people expect from Google and what Google is doing now is just that much more glaring/obvious.
And that is part of the reason why Microsoft has been hated/less trusted than Google for so long (and still is). Google is making a very big mistake ruining this image and supposedly core principles with the actions it's been taking in the past couple of years. They won't recover for decades from this, just like Microsoft still hasn't fully. Google's "Don't be evil" has been a huge branding asset, but it seems Google…
> These days I distrust almost every move Google makes by default, and I imagine there is a growing number of people like me.
Google has lost its way, not just with this, but with AMP/Chrome/URLs, and their impending destruction of one of the great achievements of modern technology -- the decentralized, open WWW. The Web was always under attack but to see the fatal blows delivered by Google is very depressing.
I've already removed Facebook's companies entirely from my life. This year, I'm working on moving away from Google as much as possible.
Re: Google Suppresses Memo Revealing Plans to Closely Track Search Users in China
#30> According to three sources familiar with the incident, Google leadership discovered the memo and were furious that secret details about the China censorship were being passed between employees who were not supposed to have any knowledge about it. Subsequently, Google human resources personnel emailed employees who were believed to have accessed or saved copies of the memo and ordered them to immediately delete it from their computers. Emails demanding deletion of the memo contained “pixel trackers” that notified human resource managers when their messages had been read, recipients determined.
Has the Dragonfly memo leaked publicly yet?