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We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

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Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#21
post #11

Why are there 3 threads in the top 10 relating to this topic but 0 have comments?

it almost looks like someone is pushing agenda, eh?

It almost looks like it's a breaking news story and everyone's waiting for the mods to notice and condense them all into a single thread, like they always do.

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#22
What am I missing? The cost of switching to an alternative search engine like Bing or Duck is next to zero. (Actually, I dropped Google for Duck just 2 months ago.)

Brand is the most valuable asset Google has. Is the Chinese search market - and other evil projects - really worth the damage to Google's public image?

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#24
post #18

If I was in China and had to choose between having a choice between censored baidu and censored google vs just censored baidu, I'd rather have both baidu and google. It's easy for us here in the western world as we have access to both and more uncensored sources to take the moral high ground and subject the Chinese to a "let them eat cake" attitude. Not sure if this will benefit people over there though to ban google…

But why do you need two censored search engines? What would be the difference between them?

Filters might not overlap completely

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#25
post #18

If I was in China and had to choose between having a choice between censored baidu and censored google vs just censored baidu, I'd rather have both baidu and google. It's easy for us here in the western world as we have access to both and more uncensored sources to take the moral high ground and subject the Chinese to a "let them eat cake" attitude. Not sure if this will benefit people over there though to ban google…

But why do you need two censored search engines? What would be the difference between them?

The same as the difference between Google and Bing for us. They surface different things.

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#26
post #18

If I was in China and had to choose between having a choice between censored baidu and censored google vs just censored baidu, I'd rather have both baidu and google. It's easy for us here in the western world as we have access to both and more uncensored sources to take the moral high ground and subject the Chinese to a "let them eat cake" attitude. Not sure if this will benefit people over there though to ban google…

But why do you need two censored search engines? What would be the difference between them?

Google is technically superior to baidu in many areas, specially for a developers. It gives better answers in many subjects, not just the censored ones. Besides who are we to decide for the Chinese what is best for them? Sounds a bit condescending and paternalistic. Here here, baidu is enough for you to play with, don't bother with google.

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#27
The alternative to google censoring its search is using chinese services - search, shopping, payment, IM.

For work reasons I had to use chinese web, and believe me, the later is much worse for a westerner.

Minimal i18n, confusing visual design, payments that dont go throught, random network errors, total reliance on you having a mobile phone.

Yes, censhorship is bad, but I rather use censored service from a western company than a censored service from a chinese company.

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#28
At this point I don't believe this project could be successful. Even if it's not canceled the Chinese government is never gonna let a foreign company get the market share against the local champions : even more as this company has internal disent about the project. Also the links with the US government won't help.

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#29

There are not many Chinese names in the signed letter, and I can fully understand. If you are a Chinese H1B or green card holder, and you signed this letter, it is almost certain the Chinese government will contact your family in China.

Can confirm, China watches its citizens abroad, closely, and in person sometimes. Their families can be affected, and if they go back home to visit, there can be problems.
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