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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

#111

Post by pixl97 »

imglorp wrote: post #29
educationdata wrote: post #10

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.

>China watches its citizens abroad

Now with increased efficiency with Dragonfly technology. Find enemies of the state with our world wide database, US and EU results included. All brought to you by the Alphabet platform.

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#112

Post by jerf »

fabiospampinato wrote: post #44

It might be interesting to hear the answer Eric Schmidt himself gave to the question: "Is Google willing to accept internet censorship to enter China?" here: https://youtu.be/3tNpYpcU5s4?t=4296 . TL;DR: He said no.

Actions speak, words don't.

(I find I had to update the old aphorism for the late 20th and 21st century. After centuries of studies on how to use words to manipulate people, words are now simply nearly useless and while I'm human and I can't claim total success, I try to just ignore them now. )

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#113

Post by komali2 »

Puer wrote: post #38

I considered working at Google last year after a recruiter reached out to me, but their decision to backtrack on their promise in China changed my mind. I do not morally condemn anyone who works at Google. I have many good friends that are both bright engineers and undeniably good people that work there. I just feel that as someone who's family is Taiwanese, I cannot in good consciousness support the company. I let t…

I sympathize with your position, especially regarding Taiwan, but I wonder if your early rejection was as effective as employees rebelling? One need not take the most effective route, but given the size of Google, when I was in a similar position to yours I justified it by saying if I got an offer, I'd make it very clear I'd want nothing to do with the censorship work for the exact reason you listed.

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#114

Post by mtgx »

hnphillipj wrote: post #47

Given how trash of a search engine Baidu is, Google would likely achieve market share dominance in China within a couple years - should they move forward with Dragonfly. Complying with demands of the Chinese gov't is the only way they can penetrate the Chinese market. Search engine advertising constitutes close to 85% of Google's revenue. And unlike Project Maven, which was ended due to internal resistance from emplo…

> Given how trash of a search engine Baidu is, Google would likely achieve market share dominance in China within a couple years

You can't be serious. Don't ever underestimate brand inertia, especially in a "super-patriotic" country like China. If Google had any chance at all, and assuming the Chinese government or Baidu's friends in the government wouldn't interfere with the "free market" in China to hurt Google at every turn, it would still take at least 5-7 years for Google to even get close to Baidu's market share.

Also this assumes this wouldn't catch a fire under Baidu's ass to start innovating and investing more into its search software and server farms.

I still believe it would be all but impossible for Google to beat Baidu in China. I just don't ever see it happening. If it was so easy, why hasn't even happened in Russia, where Google actually had significantly larger market share, had to deal with fewer political games than in China, and its Chrome browser I think was actually the most popular there until recently (or it may still be the most popular there).

If Google can't beat Yandex, it absolutely can't beat Baidu, no matter how much it "complies" with the Chinese governments' rules.

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#115

Post by exabrial »

scribu wrote: post #104
exabrial wrote: post #78

I have mixed feelings about this... I fully support free information not filtered by nation states, but abandoning search in China means you abandon the chance to make it a better place :/ I think developers and engineers we often do assign enough value to "progress" vs perfection. Rome didn't fall in a day, as they say.

I don’t follow your logic. If the first step to entering the Chinese market requires bending to the government’s will, what makes you think Google would have any leverage in the future to be able to “make it a better place”?

You inadvertently demonstrated exactly what I was talking about. You're thinking in absolutes, and I would point to the legalization of marijuana in Colorado to demonstrate the power of subtle resistance.

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#116

Post by vasilipupkin »

atomical wrote: post #73
vasilipupkin wrote: post #41

I respect the motivation of the people behind this but I disagree with the logic here. It seems to be a zero or none type of logic. Are Chinese better off with not having google search engine as a choice, even if censored and having only local options, or are they better off having at least some choice, even if that choice is censored? I think it's the second, not the first.

What's the difference between choice A and choice B? It seems there is no difference. Let's move onto the next logical argument. If the argument is that someone else will do it if we don't then do morals and values ever come into play? This is one reason why export controls on technology are important. The corporations don't mind helping oppressive governments lock up dissidents.

choice A is for google not to build a Chinese engine and for Chinese to use censored versions of locally built search engines. Choice B is for them to have a choice of local search engines and a google search engine ( all censored ). Seems to me from moral point of view, Chinese are better off under B and so I don't see why it's wrong for google to go with B

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#117

Post by kome »

nakedrobot2 wrote: post #95

OH these fresh young naive minds, who think censorship never happens. Censorship happens ALL THE TIME. The Radio, TV, and Film industries in the USA - they have all been censored, from the very beginning.[1] So it was self-censorship at the behest of the government. What's the difference? Censorship is all around us. Americans self-censor tits and genitals, Europeans self-censor violence. Censorship is everywhere. I…

Can we agree on the fact that censorship in a democracy is different from censorship in an autocracy?

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#118

Post by GeneralMayhem »

patrickaljord wrote: post #49
alexandercrohde wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the situation should be looked at more holistically. Here are some other factors to consider: - Does it soil our hands to build the "Mental handcuffs" of China, even if Baidu started it? - Does it stop at China? Or what about Turkey? Iran? Would we build a search in Saudi Arabia that didn't let women look up divorce if the government wanted it? - Does it come to America? What about searches that seem criminal…

Google is already censoring specific searches all over the world, in the EU for example, the right to be forgotten and many "hate speech" laws already force google to censor many sites that are filtered out.

Censorship in the EU is generally intended to protect individuals; censorship in China is meant to protect the ones doing the censoring. The EU has democratically elected governments; China is an authoritarian dictatorship.

Those are differences in kind, not just degree.

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#119

Post by netheril96 »

educationdata wrote: post #10

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.

Or that they genuinely hold different views.

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#120

Post by thomastjeffery »

Aunche wrote: post #84
educationdata wrote: post #10

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.

Or it's because they would rather access to a censored Google without using a VPN when they visit China. If they really think that Dragonfly is worse than Baidu or Bing, they don't have to use it. This is a classic case of privileged westerners deciding that they know better than the actual residents – a modern day white man's burden. Edit: Flagged for an unpopular view. Hacker news has sunk to a new low. Whatever gu…

These people are making a point to not support Dragonfly.

Just because a workaround exists does not mean the problem is solved, or that the workaround will exist forever.

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