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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

#181

Post by dagmx »

SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #168
tokai wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>How did you argue against the inevitable "if we don't take this contract, dude across the street will"? Collective action. They can hire 14 new guys, but they won't have any to instruct the new employees in their work.

While I’d like to try and agree... I think you may be missing a sense of scale and the reality of just how replaceable people are... even magically-gifted google employees.

There's always a break even point on where keeping an employee is worth less than letting them go.

It truly depends on the company and employee though. For many people that point can be extremely high so they have the power to push for ethical (or not) choices.

That power of course multiplied by the number of such people.

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#182

Post by ALittleLight »

patrickaljord wrote: post #80
TallGuyShort wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's only condescending in a nationalist sense. I look at my own government and how well it chooses what is best for me, and I have to ask, who is the Chinese government to decide what is best for the Chinese people?

Unless you're an anarchist, that's exactly what the government's job is: decide what's best for people. That's why you have prescription only drugs, anti-vice laws, securities. All these things exist because the government think the people are too dumb to decide things by themselves. Not saying I agree with it, just saying you would need to argue for anarchism if you were to argue "who is the X government to decide w…

I think the government's job is to provide the goods and services that the free market can't effectively provide or wouldn't provide to most citizens. Roads, military defense, healthcare, etc. I'm no anarchist but I very much disagree the government should be deciding what is best for people. Areas where it tries to are a mistake.

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#183

Post by lostgame »

grecy wrote: post #178
nimbius wrote: post #33

Pretty bold. A lot of people are saying this wont work, but speaking from my own experience, you'd be surprised what companies are amicable to when it comes to business. Im an engine mechanic by trade, and our shops handle bids for cash strapped local governments that outsource their motor pool maintenance. We do things like fire trucks and police cars, but we were working on a new regional idea as a "service center"…

> Pretty bold It's interesting you would label this as such. In what is ostensibly the best country in the world, and a massive proponent of free speech and human rights, you think it's bold to write a letter on the internet to your extraordinarily famous employer? If it's considered bold in the USA involving Google, I shudder to think about anyone else doing this anywhere else. In the year 2018 I would hope it's ver…

>> a massive proponent of free speech and human rights

Yeah, 'human rights', right, so that's why they're so[1] focused[2] on separating families[3], and I guess 'free speech' is what allows the POTUS to be a racist[4], fear-mongering, corrupt[5] liar[6]?

Or is 'free speech' the thing that allows denial[7] of climate change[8] even while California burns to the ground?

And I guess with 'human rights' that goes along with the USA's tendency to start senseless[9] wars[10], often ignoring[11] civilian casualites?

It seems as though 'make America great again' is almost an open confession that it no longer is, or was.

[1] https://www.vox.com/2018/6/11/17443198/children-immigrant-fa... [2] https://www.npr.org/2018/06/19/621065383/what-we-know-family... [3] https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-ice-raids... [4] https://www.vox.com/2016/7/25/12270880/donald-trump-racism-h... [5] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/28/opinion/trump-administrat... [6] https://www.stuff.co.nz/world/americas/108885940/factcheckin... [7] https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/18/opinions/trumps-failure-to-fi... [8] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/26/opinion/climate-change-de... [9] http://theindependent.ca/2018/06/01/why-is-the-united-states... [10] https://foreignpolicy.com/2011/04/04/is-america-addicted-to-... [11] https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-do-we-ignore-the...

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#184

Post by _petronius »

snaky wrote: post #65
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a billion users potentially, and Google only has a few billion users to begin with. Which is to say, yes, corporate greed suggests the opportunity to grow by 20-30% is absolutely worth sacrificing petty things like conscience and morals.

Business don't decide that kind of things, consumers do. If there were clear intention from the majority of Western people to stop using every Google product the same second Google launch the censored search service in China, then Google would never do it. Western people don't really care much? Well, they should blame themselves then, not Google.

> Business don't decide that kind of things, consumers do.

This is a cop-out. Businesses have a responsibility for the decisions they make, and "it's profitable" should only be one factor.

> If there were clear intention from the majority of Western people to stop using every Google product the same second Google launch the censored search service in China, then Google would never do it.

I think you underestimate how much Google has become not just the default choice, but the only choice for a lot of people, who have never heard of alternatives and who use Google because it's what their browser defaults to (we even call the very act of running a search on the internet "Googling it"), and might not know how to switch, much less reasons why they should.

I find the "market forces will take care of it, and if they don't then people don't care" argument more than a little disingenuous, because it ignores the huge number of variables that account for why people choose product A over product Y that have nothing to do with the quality of the product or the company that makes it.

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#185

Post by thoughtexplorer »

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.

What does that mean? What will they say or do to the family?

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#186

Post by divbzero »

Even if Google drops Dragonfly, centralized tracking will always be a tempting honeypot for abuse.

DuckDuckGo [1], the non-tracking search engine, is seriously worth considering. It wasn’t good enough 5 years ago, but is now and serves well as my default search engine.

[1]: https://duckduckgo.com

(I have no affiliation with DuckDuckGo, just rooting for them to stay true to their mission.)

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#187

Post by maemilius »

SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #168
tokai wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>How did you argue against the inevitable "if we don't take this contract, dude across the street will"? Collective action. They can hire 14 new guys, but they won't have any to instruct the new employees in their work.

While I’d like to try and agree... I think you may be missing a sense of scale and the reality of just how replaceable people are... even magically-gifted google employees.

Replacing people might be easy, but it's never cheap - even in industries with an abundance of candidates.

The real issue with having your work-force leave is three-fold. First, you lose all the accumulated knowledge of your team. Second, you lose the cohesiveness of your team. Thirdly, you have to _pay to get a new team_.

All of these things conspire to make all but the lowliest of jobs (think Target Associate) much more painful to replace than it seems.

In short, there are lots of hidden costs in recruiting.

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#188

Post by barry-cotter »

nradov wrote: post #144
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…

Baidu currently has no real competitors so they can afford to be a bit lazy. If Google enters the Chinese search engine market then Baidu won't just surrender, they'll improve their product to compete. They certainly have the capital and resources to do so if they make it a priority.

Baidu has been worse than Google at Chinese language search for its entire existence and only got traction because it was the best way to get porn and Google’s performance was highly degraded by package dropping. Google has no competitors in search. It’s so much better that the other search engines are just comical.

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#189

Post by aglavine »

aibrahem wrote: post #136

As someone who lived most of his life in a dictatorship, I really struggle to understand the logic of these employees. I was actually surprised Google stepped out of China a couple of years ago and felt like the decision was taken by a bunch of people who don't understand what it's like to live in a non-democratic country. Do they think that everybody in China cares that their internet is censored or that they're bei…

This is an open question and deeper than it seems. What to do with dictatorships and failed countries?

You can't isolated them but neither you can fully accept their conditions. Maybe the google employees decision will put other options on the table.

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#190

Post by HillaryBriss »

EZ-E wrote: post #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.

agree. i don't quite see what enduring, long-term competitive edge Google could actually have in China.

is it the huge quantity of computing resources behind their search engine? (wouldn't Baidu or other Chinese companies be able to easily outbuild Google?)

is it the incredible, mysterious superiority of the super-duper secret Page Rank algorithm? ( jk )

is it the sophisticated and complex home page design and superior google doodles?

i mean what is it exactly?

google won't be able to reach the monopoly level of market share it enjoys in the US search market so it would actually have to compete on a month to month basis for its very life. this means it will hire a lot of very hard workers in China. and that means google's secret sauce (if it even exists) will make its way out and into the competitive landscape before Google can get close to being a monopoly. it just seems like a losing game.

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