Google Plans to Launch Censored Search Engine in China, Leaked Documents Reveal

We'll, that feels pretty wrong...

First the military drones, now getting in bed with China, and the law straw was removing almost every mention of "Don't be evil" from its workers' code of conduct manual.

I think it's pretty clear at this point Google is willing to sell their own mothers (and your data) just to keep those profitable quarters up for many more years.

As more advertisers start preferring Facebook, I think Google will become even more desperate in regards to what it will be willing to do to increase revenue and profits quarter after quarter. Expect many big "evil" things to come from Google in the near future.

Dont be evil was pretty much meaningless to begin with. Its not like there was a clear definition, and not being evil is a far cry from being actively a force for Good.

>First the military drones, now getting in bed with China, and the law straw was removing almost every mention of "Don't be evil" from its workers' code of conduct manual.

I'm sorry, but providing services to the US military (as an American company) does not qualify as 'evil'. I hear the same insane calls for not providing services to ICE, a federal, civilian agency enforcing American democratically-derived laws.

With respect to Google's dealings with China (and similarly Facebook's dealings with Russia), you can't expect technology companies to fight or even ignore major world military, economic and geopolitical powers.

It's not fair for Google to take the 'high-road' with China when nobody else does. I'm certain OP has no qualms in buying and using Chinese-made goods but still complains about Google being evil because they can't afford to ignore 1.4 billion people.

It is not fair for Facebook to fight Russian attempts at election engineering. It's not fair when the public demands that Facebook take all responsibility for being targeted by a major global power with unlimited resources to launch cyber attacks (looking at you Swisher).

Both cases are failures of US, and European governments. US and EU should exert diplomatic and economic pressure on China and Russia to liberalize their governments, and economies (the shit the China gets away with in the kinds of hoops it requires foreign companies to jump through is insane). In the case of Russia, it is the US and EU that should take every step necessary to force that government to stop targeting western technologies companies for purpose of manipulating the voting public.

This is particularly directed at the EU and Germany as they are very fond of publicly stating that with Trump being Trump that EU/Germany should take on a leadership position in world and they have the most to lose. Thus far, EU has done very little to curb Russian aggression (Germany particularly has been quiet) EVEN in light of the fact that Russia funded and took active role in the misinformation campaign that led to Brexit, and multitudes of EU and European nations have been either targeted with military force (Ukraine) or dirty money for corrupting politicians. Apparently none of this is enough for EU and Germany to pay more than lip service to Russian aggression.

There seems to be a hypocrisy with people upset about censorship on behalf of China, but don’t seem all that upset about censorship on behalf of the EU (eg RTBF) or censorship when it supports their politics (eg hate speech)

I don’t support this theoretical move, but asserting Google should pull out/stay out of China and not obey/comply with local laws, and yet argue that the EU local laws should have global reach seems unjustified and unequal respect for sovereignty.