We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

> Google would likely achieve dominant search engine market share in China within a few years

You assume that the government would ever let a foreign company get dominant market share over a domestic one.

China is no where close to a free market, the winners are chosen.

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.

This has far more chance (if still very slim) of being effective than a few dozen software engineers resigning.

Is it not inevitable that where the ethical Code sees Injustice the corporate bottom line sees a dollar sign? I believe the correct avenue of approach for this type of issue is to offer an alternative. Simply telling your higher-ups to stay out of the market is not going to be sustainable. And given that you all work at Google, I expect there are many alternatives you could come up with. Such as banking on Google scholar to help bridge misunderstandings with China. Google is an advertising company and asking Google to not show ads to billions of Chinese people is like asking a shark to go vegan. The ethical imperative is not a part of the reward system that the corporate algorithm known as Google optimizes for. If you really want to change Google's core mission you must change what is positively reinforced. However it seems like any capitalist endeavor aimed at the Chinese market must first be subservient to that bright red flag. China is well aware of this and doesn't care if Google doesn't have a market share. Google, seen as a foreign company, also doesn't get any special perks or connections in China. At any rate, there are plenty of untaken letters in the alphabet, I'm sure the higher-ups will find one that will suit the purpose of a censored search engine. I'm sorry to seem dismal in my analysis but a Google employee who is fed by advertising dollars must also understand that the party wants to control entirely what people see hear and think. Google doesn't have to provide this functionality, plenty of other firms will and are already. I think what would make a bigger difference is asking Google to acquire Chinese companies and slowly unfold them from the inside out. I would be cautious about mixing volatile compounds such as Chinese information technology and a global tech giant, and I think efforts of both the higher-ups and the upset employees would be better aimed at ending censorship, instead of asking the bear to avoid some incredibly tempting honey. Currently the big G believes that doing the right thing must involve a dollar sign. However the argument can be made that the purity of the franchise is at stake. Of course like most big companies, you can always make two versions of something and sell the upgrade. For example that could be a censored version in China but magically with a certain USB key other results get through. But even with something that sly and sleuthy, I don't understand why Google would want to control opinion in China. The party is in the business of controlling opinion. It's like the Jesuits going to Japan and greeting the shogunate with the Bible, explaining that the character of the Bible was even higher than the Shogun. Naturally this did not sit well with the Shogun. So began a long period of ostracization and casting out of Christians in Japan. Google makes hardware, it's not like Google isn't in China, but if Google wants to get into the rich multimedia aspects of a Chinese person's everyday life, it will either be through government certified hardware, or otherwise attained hardware and software. the biggest challenge is that the network is entirely controlled by the party. Honestly though, de- censorship of a large area of China for a long enough period of time would probably have real life sociodynamic consequences. In short instead of chanting "Chinese money is no good here" how about you start chanting "mesh networks that circumvent centralized data storage for all"? As long as the party controls the network you must play by their rules. So why don't we have a fully mesh distributed decentralized internet yet? It is almost 2019, do you know where your bits are?

Activism takes many forms. They’re not mutually exclusive. Your contribution to this discussion (with a throwaway account) is to put boundaries on what activities you deem acceptable.

Your cynicism is not insightful or interesting.