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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

#351

Post by jiveturkey »

this isn’t over, not by a long shot.

if this company is still being pulled along (i hesitate to say led) by the CFO, and i believe it is, then this will have lasting repercussions.

the spark of revolution has been quelled and the peasants have been appeased. but their hand has been shown and they have but one card to play. ok sorry for the poor job at evocative rhetoric.

basically, from this point and for the next 5 years the culture will be changed by subtle, barely perceptible nudges. at the end, the engineers will be left without any real voice and any uprising will by met with backlash from their peers, not their betters.

then, google will be able to explore china and similar markets.

or perhaps, much like many tech companies license their IP from an IE subsidiary, the core tech will be licensed to a subsidiary that isn’t constrained by western morals.

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

#352

Post by tinus_hn »

ethbro wrote: post #350
tinus_hn wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s funny how things tend to get less black and white if you actually look at pros and cons and listen to arguments. The fact that there actually are pros and cons to most things means they are not black and white.

Show me evil that cannot be justified with enough words, and I'll show you an uncreative salesperson.

Sounds so deep, yet means absolutely nothing. A great piece of marijuana ‘wisdom’.

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

#353

Post by ncr100 »

burtonator wrote: post #148

True story... I run a web crawling company named Datastreamer where we license data to social media monitoring firms. We're very white hat... Don't even like to mess around with grey hat areas as we don't want something like the Cambridge Analytica situation coming back to bite us in the ass. About 1.5 years ago we were contacted by a 3rd party firm which we eventually found out was a cut out for Saudi Arabia. The de…

CIA might thank you for sharing this with them.

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

#354

Post by espeed »

burtonator wrote: post #148

True story... I run a web crawling company named Datastreamer where we license data to social media monitoring firms. We're very white hat... Don't even like to mess around with grey hat areas as we don't want something like the Cambridge Analytica situation coming back to bite us in the ass. About 1.5 years ago we were contacted by a 3rd party firm which we eventually found out was a cut out for Saudi Arabia. The de…

Three years ago I got a similar call to build a user-facing knowledge graph for the region. Effectively replicating Freebase, backed by the regional telecom and the Royal Family. It was likely the same group that approached you because I was approached in precisely the same way.

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

#355

Post by ionised »

tlear wrote: post #331
_khau wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Think of it as how Americans are completely tolerant of communists What?

What was it 17-18% of social science profs that self identify as Marxists? http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.147...

You're talking about the country of McCarthyism and the Red Scare here. Those same attitudes persist in much of the population.

Tolerant is absolutely not the word I would use.

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

#356

Post by daemin »

C1sc0cat wrote: post #286
fipple wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would completely set up my family and children for life. I’d get to quit my job and spend all day with my kids. If some people I don’t know get fucked over for that, whatever. And that kind of thinking is why the world is such a wretched place. But I can’t say I wouldn’t jump at the opportunity.

Depends if your host countries intelligence agency takes a dim view of what you are doing as happened with the Iraqi super gun. And some countries play harder ball than the CIA and SIS

Why not offer it for them to buy as well?

If you're making this sort of software for one country or organisation then you're effectively a weapons trafficker so you might as well sell to all sides and reap in the profits.

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

#357

Post by glenrivard »

Is interesting that Microsoft has a censored search engine in China and people do not say much about it.

But worse is they have censored search in the US for Chinese speaking people apparently.

"Bing censoring Chinese language search results for users in the US"

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/feb/11/bing-cens...

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

#359

Post by jiveturkey »

tivert wrote: post #101
shaki-dora wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would that work? A secret search engine? Or Google pretending to give in under pressure from employees, then turn around and tell them (and everyone else) "haha, we lied" and launching it? How would that not create far larger harm than just not giving in in the first place?

> Or Google pretending to give in under pressure from employees, then turn around and tell them (and everyone else) "haha, we lied" and launching it? How would that not create far larger harm than just not giving in in the first place? Google hasn't pretended to give in to pressure from employees. Project Dragonfly is still being worked on: > In recent weeks, teams working on Dragonfly have been told to use different…

> It seems like 265.com was purchased to do exactly what the Google Privacy Team has forbidden.

from TFA it was purchased in 2008. the privacy team wasn’t really a powerful thing until 2011, as a result of the ftc consent decree.

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

#360

Post by drugme »

fipple wrote: post #251
reimertz wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why?

It would completely set up my family and children for life. I’d get to quit my job and spend all day with my kids. If some people I don’t know get fucked over for that, whatever. And that kind of thinking is why the world is such a wretched place. But I can’t say I wouldn’t jump at the opportunity.

If some people I don’t know get fucked over for that, whatever.

And when your kids lost all respect for you after finding out what a shameless sell-out you are, well...

whatever.

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