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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

#211

Post by SeanAppleby »

zaphar wrote: post #48
bluejekyll wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google can kick them out and replace within a month. Ah. A believer that software engineers are cogs and can just be “replaced” without training and learning of code bases. Hiring software engineers, bringing them up to speed, and having them contribute to production features, is expensive. Also, you’ll never truly recoup the lost knowledge that goes.

The typical ramp up time for a new Google engineer is roughly 3-6 months. So it's more like replace them within 3mo at a generous estimate. Also a few of those were staff You can replace those in 2-3yrs maybe. Does Google care about this cost? Hard to say from the outside. But for every signature on this you can bet there are many more inside being very vocal. One part of Google's culture is that it encouraged feedba…

I listened to a longform interview with the head of their HR strategy which referenced the company consistently citing talent attraction and retention as the number one limitation on company growth.

They invest extremely heavily in minimizing attrition and widening their funnel for recruiting. That's why their offices are crazy, they do 3 meals a day for employees, they pay a ton of money for people right out of college and for interns, everyone gets free massages, etc. They take any effect that narrows that funnel or increases attrition very seriously, as they view the company as fundamentally being a stable of the best software engineers they can get competing with the best software engineers other people can get to put out better solutions to problems.

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#212

Post by snaky »

mtgx wrote: post #114
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…

> Don't ever underestimate brand inertia, especially in a "super-patriotic" country like China.

OTOH Chinese consumers are recently obsessed with western products actually. Not with iPhones (you can buy Xiaomi smartphone, laptop, and Bluetooth headset for the price of iPhone), but with clothes, food, and many other goods.

> If Google can't beat Yandex, it absolutely can't beat Baidu

Don't underestimate Yandex.

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#213

Post by fzss_ »

Hypocrites. Have you considered the human rights of Chinese users?

Thanks to the absence of Google, monopoly of Baidu has enabled them to sell ads of unlicensed hospital that literally kills people.

A censored version of Google in Chinese will undoubtedly improve the quality of life of Chinese Internet users.

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#214

Post by nradov »

patrickaljord wrote: post #9

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…

Those are not the only two options. What if Google were to put some of its considerable technical resources toward undermining and subverting the Great Firewall of China? That would be in keeping with their mission statement, and might deliver a huge payoff in the long run.

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#215

Post by abecedarius »

bronco21016 wrote: post #175
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China has a vested interest in spreading it's influence globally, the same way the United States has (and is receding from a bit under the current administration). It would be far more valuable to China to get a global company like Google propagating their censorship requirements than continuing to prop up their own state-run option. If Google caves, other countries might ask for the same demands as well, which suppo…

I don’t understand why this is being downvoted. Google is dominant nearly worldwide. If China is able to get Google to cave and build the censorship machine then what barrier is there to turning the feature ‘on’ for other countries that ask for it? There are plenty of oppressive regimes interested in a censored Google but they don’t have the pull to get Google to build it right now. Once it’s built though why wouldn’…

Further, once Google depends on its China operations for revenue, what's to stop the Chinese state from leaning on them further? With enough leverage, they won't scruple at affecting what Google does in the west as well.

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#216

Post by grecy »

lostgame wrote: post #203
porphyrogene wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

‘Ostensibly’ does not mean what you think it means.

I think, clearly, the larger issue here is the false idea that the USA is a proponent of free speech or human rights. I would certainly never in a million years hope anyone would seriously claim the US to be the greatest country in the world.

> I would certainly never in a million years hope anyone would seriously claim the US to be the greatest country in the world.

I am quite certain a significant proportion of Americans genuinely believe it is.

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#217

Post by garmaine »

schalab wrote: post #91
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…

Why dont western companies band together and threaten a boycott until some kind of IP laws are enforced? They just keep getting picked off one by one.

Have you used the internet in China? There is no meaningful presence of foreign companies. They’re already kicked out.

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#218

Post by scarcely »

alexandercrohde wrote: post #127
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…

I find the way you phrase this super-alienating. If anything, it pushes me away from your cause. 1. Comes across as ad-hominem 2. Comes across as emotional/pedantic 3. For example, yes "pornography" is censored on broadcast TV, but many other things aren't. There are obviously degrees of censorship. 4. If your goal is to convince people that things are more censored than they realize you might want to cite some real…

I don't think the user you are responding intends his comment to be putting forward some watertight argument. It sounds light-hearted to me. It's puzzling to me that you'd pick on this one particular comment to produce a detailed, five-point rebuttal in a thread like this one where there are so many other more important targets to go after.

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#219

Post by majewsky »

lostgame wrote: post #203
porphyrogene wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

‘Ostensibly’ does not mean what you think it means.

I think, clearly, the larger issue here is the false idea that the USA is a proponent of free speech or human rights. I would certainly never in a million years hope anyone would seriously claim the US to be the greatest country in the world.

You're in for a bad surprise. A lot of people were opposed to Trump's "Make America Great Again" claim because the claim insinuates that the US might not be literally the greatest country in the world right now.

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#220

Post by fzss_ »

netheril96 wrote: post #119
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.

Or that they understand a censored version of Google is already way better than Baidu, in every sense, information accuracy, ethnically
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