I am lost at what Google attempts to gain with this. Even if you abide by their rules, I don't think the Chinese Government would be very willing to lose control of a crucial communication medium to a foreign corporation. In the end, they want their companies to win.
Then, there's the PR disaster that's bound to come up once it gets official. In a single move, Google would be conveying how far it has moved from its foundational values. I fail to see how this would be a net positive for the company.
>I am lost at what Google attempts to gain with this.
Revenue.
>Then, there's the PR disaster that's bound to come up once it gets official.
Does the public care about privacy? Does the public understand or care about China's firewall? Does the public have an attention span long enough to ruin Google's reputation?
"Biggest untapped market in the world" is a phrase that you'll hear a lot if you listen to the financial news networks. That's the long and short of it.
I would hope they can sign this letter without incurring "personal risk". Has the environment at Google changed so much that writing letters could risk people's chance at employment?
Not to be snarky but aren't they censoring at home as well? Whatever you think of Alex Jones or whatever you think you think about him and his ilk, censoring speech is for the feeble minded and tyrannous. Let's leave thought policing to the politicians and the government.
> Let's leave thought policing to the politicians and the government.
That's actually exactly what the First Amendment of the United States Constitution explicitly prevents.
What it doens't prevent, though, is what you're actually upset about. Private corporations and individuals can censor all day long in the United States. It's a great misunderstanding that they're somehow not entitled to that.
Except his speech has put innocent people at risk of being harassed, or in physical danger. When they sued he immediately claimed he was the victim. I have no sympathy for Alex Jones. Don't claim free speech to harass people, then get upset when you're sued for harassment.
YouTube is a private platform, and they can censor whatever they like. It only interrupts Freedom of Speech if the government influences this censorship.
Meanwhile, in China, the government dictates all censorship. Google is required to follow this exactly.
> The letter is circulating on Google’s internal communication systems and is signed by about 1,000 employees, according to two people familiar with the document, who were not authorized to speak publicly.
> ...
> The internal debate over Maven, viewed by both supporters and opponents as opening the door to much bigger defense contracts, generated a petition signed by about 4,000 employees who demanded “a clear policy stating that neither Google nor its contractors will ever build warfare technology.”
Are signatures still being collected on the China letter? That count is quite a bit less than letter protesting Project Maven.
In my mind, trying to enter the Chinese market is far more concerning than Project Maven. The Chinese government has shown ample willingness to use its economic leverage to force foreign companies to adopt its stances (for instance http://time.com/5348666/airlines-websites-taiwan-china/), and subjecting Google, our main portal to the internet to that pressure is just too risky.
I don't get why this is such a big thing. I'm not taking any sides here, but what's surprising to me is that I never saw any mention of Microsoft in the comments over the last couple days, when stories about google going into China again hit HN. Nobody seems to care what kind of deals they have with the chinese govt to offer bing, hotmail or plain old windows in China. Have we all just accepted that Microsoft is pure evil and would do anything to make a buck or two? This is in stark contrast with how whenever a google related story hit HN before, everyone was giving them shit in the comments about invading everyone's privacy, collecting data like crazy, closing down every service they ever bought up, improperly implement protocols or create new standards hurting the competition. It sounds like the full "old Microsoft" experience, but now everyone is super surprised and disappointed how they could possibly do this move. I don't get it.
This is the part I don't get. It is my understanding that if you offer an internet service in China, you have to give your source code to the central government. I'm not super well versed on this but would love to learn a bit from someone on HN that understands these requirements in more detail and how google might try and work around them if needed.
I think this is the third time in as many months I'm reading about Google employees protesting their employer's behavior.
One the one hand, it's clearly a good sign that employees are comfortable doing this, as it could guide an enormous company to do better things for the world, and the lack of a contractual Sword of Damocles over their continued employment encourages the free flow of information and conversation.
On the other...were the first two times that your employer was found to be engaged in behavior you found to be morally bankrupt not enough? At some point, it's the rule, not the exception.
I'm curious what people think about protest commits. Would it be unethical for a group of employees to get together and push an update to put up a protest banner across some google software? Much like a picket line across a factory entrance?
It's interesting that this free exchange of ideas, and group dissent, inside of Google is exactly the power that the Chinese people lack over their own government. It really shows why the Chinese government is so afraid of it. And why it's so necessary as a tool for maintaining the ethics of a massive organization.
Many of their competitors operate in China to some degree: Yahoo, Bing, even DuckDuckGo until 2014. There's no shifting from values here, Google operated in China until 2010 when it was kicked out, and this is just a move to make it back in.
I don't want to be relying on the broken windows fallacy here however. We don't know the extent to which the Chinese government wants Google to comply. Since there are already a bunch of comments speculating the negatives, we can do the same with the positives.
Let's look at the potential benefits of existing in China. Results will be censored, there's no getting around that, but unfavorable, yet uncensored, results can be prioritized. Support for Chinese related tools might improve due to the increase in data. Translation could see a quality improvement for one of the most spoken languages in the world. Google may see an increase in revenue, potentially creating more jobs. Ads in China may provide an easier entry way for Americans to advertise there. I'm sure the list goes on.
I honestly couldn't care less about search results in China.
Why aren't they protesting about their technology potentially being abused during election cycles in US? That is something that hits closer to home for me.
There is some element of YouTube (and maybe Google Search results) returning things and suggesting things that are intended to lead people towards whomever is paying for those things to float to the top.
Absolute BS. Don't Google censor tons of results already according to the US law? Dare they show any pro-ISIS website to the American audience? Dare they stop performing all those DMCA takedowns? What's the fundamental difference between these two? Each country has its own laws regulating the online space and neither China nor the US is an exception to this. I really don't think any of them can offer any sort of convincing response to such questions. Just another display of typical arrogance and double standards that they have long shown, nothing new at all.
It's exactly like how people would clamor to censor all sorts of alt-right websites with glee, but defend all Trump-bashing websites to death. It's not that I approve of any alt-right ideology at all, but if they are serious about real "free speech", they need to drop this sort of double standards asap. Otherwise it's just another laughable exercise in hypocrisy and only labeling what helps their own interests as "just", exactly what the US government has been doing overseas in all these decades. Nobody would buy into such nonsense.
I hope that between this and the defeat of Project Maven, Google employees are waking up to how much power they have when act collectively. Hopefully, more formal labor organization follows, so there can be an ongoing check on the poor, executive-level decision-making that keeps pushing the company into these unethical pursuits.
Not sure why you're being downvoted. This seems like an extremely reasonable statement to me. Ethics seem to not really be valued in many large tech companies anymore, as long as employee's can make large sums of money.
Google's pullout of China in the first place was their biggest corporate mistake and they should at least try to remedy that.
Their absence from China didn't liberate the Chinese people and their reentry won't either, they need to ignore the hypocrites and do what's best for the company and for the long term they should tweak company culture and make it clear that rank and file employees won't have a say in big picture corporate decisions and planning, they already cost the company dearly and it must not become a habit.
> [Yahoo] claimed it had no choice other than to comply with a request from Beijing to share information about the online activities of the journalists. Yahoo handed their email records to the Chinese government.
> The journalists, Wang Xiaoning and Shi Tao, are serving 10-year jail sentences. Wang was accused of "incitement to subvert state power" after he emailed electronic journals advocating democratic reform and establishment of a multiparty system to replace the present authoritarian state. Shi was charged with passing on information that was designated a state secret
Its either "Organizing the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." or its a propaganda machine to maintain its position in the Chinese market (which will be the largest in the world soon).
I prefer google stick to its mission and serve the 6 billion of us that require free information to do our jobs.
Google pulled out of China not because they wanted to liberate the Chinese people, but because the PLA was hacking (as the PLA likes to say, “liberating”) Gmail accounts of HK dissidents.
Such desperate moves on Google’s part do not bode well for the numbers in their next quarterly report. They knew there would be strong blowback, yet they chose to do it anyway. That could mean other ads markets are decelerating, which would be a very bad news indeed for an advertising company like Google which derives 90% of its income from ads. Hence the desperation. Disclaimer: this is all just a conjecture, I do not have any positions in GOOG.
[+] [-] shubhamjain|7 years ago|reply
Then, there's the PR disaster that's bound to come up once it gets official. In a single move, Google would be conveying how far it has moved from its foundational values. I fail to see how this would be a net positive for the company.
[+] [-] x2f10|7 years ago|reply
Revenue.
>Then, there's the PR disaster that's bound to come up once it gets official.
Does the public care about privacy? Does the public understand or care about China's firewall? Does the public have an attention span long enough to ruin Google's reputation?
[+] [-] crunchlibrarian|7 years ago|reply
MBAs vs humans. I hope the humans win.
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] calyth2018|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] badbug|7 years ago|reply
I'm finding this hard to believe. China has over a billion people. Google would be insane to ignore it.
[+] [-] justinzollars|7 years ago|reply
You are taking a personal risk but you are absolutely doing the right thing.
[+] [-] Leary|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pricees|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ansy|7 years ago|reply
That's actually exactly what the First Amendment of the United States Constitution explicitly prevents.
What it doens't prevent, though, is what you're actually upset about. Private corporations and individuals can censor all day long in the United States. It's a great misunderstanding that they're somehow not entitled to that.
[+] [-] badrequest|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] murph-almighty|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sdinsn|7 years ago|reply
Meanwhile, in China, the government dictates all censorship. Google is required to follow this exactly.
Very big difference.
[+] [-] TheForumTroll|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] atom-morgan|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 394549|7 years ago|reply
> ...
> The internal debate over Maven, viewed by both supporters and opponents as opening the door to much bigger defense contracts, generated a petition signed by about 4,000 employees who demanded “a clear policy stating that neither Google nor its contractors will ever build warfare technology.”
Are signatures still being collected on the China letter? That count is quite a bit less than letter protesting Project Maven.
In my mind, trying to enter the Chinese market is far more concerning than Project Maven. The Chinese government has shown ample willingness to use its economic leverage to force foreign companies to adopt its stances (for instance http://time.com/5348666/airlines-websites-taiwan-china/), and subjecting Google, our main portal to the internet to that pressure is just too risky.
[+] [-] iforgotpassword|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dqpb|7 years ago|reply
2. China steals source code and gives to Baidu
3. China kicks Google out of China
[+] [-] danimal88|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Arubis|7 years ago|reply
One the one hand, it's clearly a good sign that employees are comfortable doing this, as it could guide an enormous company to do better things for the world, and the lack of a contractual Sword of Damocles over their continued employment encourages the free flow of information and conversation.
On the other...were the first two times that your employer was found to be engaged in behavior you found to be morally bankrupt not enough? At some point, it's the rule, not the exception.
[+] [-] drb91|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bargl|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jbob2000|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] headmelted|7 years ago|reply
Morally, of course its wrong, but what's the alternative over the long term?
They would cede the market to a more accomodating competitor (e.g. Baidu), who would then have a strategic advantage.
Google's potential market share is (world - China - whichever other country wants to censor them)
Google is big. It's not invincible.
[+] [-] staunch|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drb91|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mooman219|7 years ago|reply
I don't want to be relying on the broken windows fallacy here however. We don't know the extent to which the Chinese government wants Google to comply. Since there are already a bunch of comments speculating the negatives, we can do the same with the positives.
Let's look at the potential benefits of existing in China. Results will be censored, there's no getting around that, but unfavorable, yet uncensored, results can be prioritized. Support for Chinese related tools might improve due to the increase in data. Translation could see a quality improvement for one of the most spoken languages in the world. Google may see an increase in revenue, potentially creating more jobs. Ads in China may provide an easier entry way for Americans to advertise there. I'm sure the list goes on.
[+] [-] mciak|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] InfiniteBeing|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] matt_s|7 years ago|reply
Why aren't they protesting about their technology potentially being abused during election cycles in US? That is something that hits closer to home for me.
There is some element of YouTube (and maybe Google Search results) returning things and suggesting things that are intended to lead people towards whomever is paying for those things to float to the top.
[+] [-] SZJX|7 years ago|reply
It's exactly like how people would clamor to censor all sorts of alt-right websites with glee, but defend all Trump-bashing websites to death. It's not that I approve of any alt-right ideology at all, but if they are serious about real "free speech", they need to drop this sort of double standards asap. Otherwise it's just another laughable exercise in hypocrisy and only labeling what helps their own interests as "just", exactly what the US government has been doing overseas in all these decades. Nobody would buy into such nonsense.
[+] [-] swerveonem|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throw7|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dragonwriter|7 years ago|reply
You can turn safe search off in the US.
[+] [-] knuththetruth|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] prolikewh0a|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] econ4all|7 years ago|reply
Their absence from China didn't liberate the Chinese people and their reentry won't either, they need to ignore the hypocrites and do what's best for the company and for the long term they should tweak company culture and make it clear that rank and file employees won't have a say in big picture corporate decisions and planning, they already cost the company dearly and it must not become a habit.
[+] [-] tivert|7 years ago|reply
Google's reentry into China will definitely give the Chinese government leverage over them. It's opening the door for stuff like this to happen:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2007/nov/14/news.yaho...
> [Yahoo] claimed it had no choice other than to comply with a request from Beijing to share information about the online activities of the journalists. Yahoo handed their email records to the Chinese government.
> The journalists, Wang Xiaoning and Shi Tao, are serving 10-year jail sentences. Wang was accused of "incitement to subvert state power" after he emailed electronic journals advocating democratic reform and establishment of a multiparty system to replace the present authoritarian state. Shi was charged with passing on information that was designated a state secret
[+] [-] justinzollars|7 years ago|reply
I prefer google stick to its mission and serve the 6 billion of us that require free information to do our jobs.
[+] [-] koboll|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] seanmcdirmid|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] droopyEyelids|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] h4b4n3r0|7 years ago|reply