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Google’s Secret China Project “Effectively Ended” After Internal Confrontation

theintercept.com

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Re: Google’s Secret China Project “Effectively Ended” After Internal Confrontation

#61

Post by sunstone »

It seems Google has now strayed far from the "don't be evil" path. First came the illegal agreement not to hire from other tech companies, then the "say nothing to no one" employment agreement all employees have to sign and now this product the help Mr. Xi put the jack boot to every neck in China. I've probably missed a few, please fill in the blanks if you can.

To a large extent Google's business, like Enron's before it, depends largely on the trust of its users. Once it begins to wobble, head for the hills.

Re: Google’s Secret China Project “Effectively Ended” After Internal Confrontation

#62

Post by munk-a »

CharlesW wrote: post #43
reaperducer wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has a very significant manufactoring presence in China, so unfortunately they can't cleanly separate from China like Google can without risking retaliation Apple can walk away from China whenever it wants to. Apple is the one company in the entire world best equipped with the cash to make this kind of public stand. But it doesn't want to because doing so will cost a lot of that money. The only thing stopping Ap…

> Apple can walk away from China whenever it wants to. Not unless they've spent the last decade building a secret duplicate supply chain ecosystem.

It would take money and time but it's something they're very able to do. And, yes, they couldn't make this decision and instantly pivot, there are real physical things that would need to be built before they could.

Re: Google’s Secret China Project “Effectively Ended” After Internal Confrontation

#63

Post by freewizard »

AFAICT the way Dragonfly utilizing search log to probe Great Fire Wall blacklist and skip them in results was the same way how google.cn (localized Google search in china) worked.

That was a smart but arguable approach, Google was heavily criticized to present those "passively censored" results. However, no one from Google at that time did a #walkout or resign for that. Also notably Google did not quit China for the criticism it received, but for a later government sponsored hack targeting its code and service known as Operation Aurora.

So to compare 8~10 years ago and now, it seems GOOG leadership hasn't change much on what they think they can do (aka "moral compass"); Google employee did become more active on these issues which I think is progressive.

Re: Google’s Secret China Project “Effectively Ended” After Internal Confrontation

#64

Post by lallysingh »

krackers wrote: post #53
gresrun wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deep Packet Inspection [0] [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_packet_inspection

Doesn't TLS defeat this?

IIRC Iran throttled TLS connections to ridiculously slow rates to discourage their use.

Re: Google’s Secret China Project “Effectively Ended” After Internal Confrontation

#65

Post by tracker1 »

fatjokes wrote: post #40

"Traditional" companies like Amazon, Apple and Oracle heavily punish employees for banding together, freely communicating and protesting like this, so they would never have the opportunity to protest controversial projects like this. I fear the main lesson corporate leaders will take from this is to lockdown on employee freedom.

Apparently that lock down has already started (regarding leaking).

Re: Google’s Secret China Project “Effectively Ended” After Internal Confrontation

#66

Post by TeMPOraL »

MrOwen wrote: post #55
krackers wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't TLS defeat this?

Not necessarily. You are correct in that you can't look at the literal messages inside the packets anymore but you can make educated assumptions based on usage patterns and packet sizes combined with data that's already in the header. Just take a look at this almost 3 year old submission detailing someone's experience with the Great Firewall: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10905076 Since that was 3 years ago, I…

I.e. side channels. There are side channels for everything. And if you don't care about precision that much - e.g. you're willing to filter out anything even remotely resembling the actual thing you're after - then TLS isn't going to be a hard problem.

Re: Google’s Secret China Project “Effectively Ended” After Internal Confrontation

#67

Post by _8j50 »

aaomidi wrote: post #33

So many people here only look at the business cost of what Google wanted to do and don't care about the human cost. It's great that you were born in a western country with a good understanding of freedom and your rights. The majority of the world don't have these conditions. Your "business" decision effects billions of people in the world. I was born and mostly raised in Iran. "Business" decisions from companies that…

I get what you're saying but a country is sovreign from othets and corporations don't get to decide what's acceptable in a country.

It comes down to this imo: will the product be used in ways that are morally wrong? Or will it be used in ways which are legally wrong or socially unacceptable?

I agree with you that a company should not sell their products to enable a moral wrong in any country.

However, free speech and oppression of democracy is not a moral wrong. "Free speech" in the west means the Government shouldn't censor speech,this is a relativly new concept almost unheard of in history. It certainly isn't a human right. If a legitimate government of a country censors speech they're merely excercising their authority unless their laws restrict them from doing so as in the west. Whatever your view may be, a corporation does not get to decide social norms and what should be legal in any country.

Re: Google’s Secret China Project “Effectively Ended” After Internal Confrontation

#68

Post by dang »

josteink wrote: post #31
dmitrygr wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> His reveal is what brought it to > the attention of other Google > employees Sad truth. And yet, >

You’re free to internal debate. Just be prepared to be fired over stating elementary biological facts, like how men and women are different. I bet James Damore really appreciates how he used this freedom in this tolerant company.

Please don't break the site guidelines by introducing extraneous flamebait into threads. Especially not of the most-repeated variety. Those are the antibiotic-resistant bacteria of HN threads.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Google’s Secret China Project “Effectively Ended” After Internal Confrontation

#69

Post by Apocryphon »

munk-a wrote: post #62
CharlesW wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple can walk away from China whenever it wants to. Not unless they've spent the last decade building a secret duplicate supply chain ecosystem.

It would take money and time but it's something they're very able to do. And, yes, they couldn't make this decision and instantly pivot, there are real physical things that would need to be built before they could.

If they can already spend all this effort into making alternate chipsets...

Re: Google’s Secret China Project “Effectively Ended” After Internal Confrontation

#70

Post by JohnJamesRambo »

tomatotomato37 wrote: post #7
izacus wrote: post #5

Great! So will Apple employees walk out next in protest of Apple assisting Chinese government by giving them iMessage and iCloud data? Source: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-apple-icloud-insigh...

Apple has a very significant manufactoring presence in China, so unfortunately they can't cleanly separate from China like Google can without risking retaliation

Sounds like a classic character test from mythology. Doing the right thing when it doesn't negatively affect you isn't really worth much.
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