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After Employee Revolt, Google Says It's 'Not Close' To Launching Search In China (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Reports from earlier this month claimed Google was working on products for the Chinese market, detailing plans for a search engine and news app that complied with the Chinese government's censorship and surveillance demands. The news was a surprise to many Googlers, and yesterday an article from The New York Times detailed a Maven-style internal revolt at the company. Fourteen hundred employees signed a letter demanding more transparency from Google's leadership on ethical issues, saying, "Google employees need to know what we're building." The letter says many employees only learned about the project through news reports and that "currently we do not have the information required to make ethically informed decisions about our work, our projects, and our employment."
According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, Google addressed the issue of China at this week's all-hands meeting. The report says CEO Sundar Pichai told employees the company was "not close to launching a search product" in China but that Pichai thinks Google can do good by engaging with China. "I genuinely do believe we have a positive impact when we engage around the world," The Journal quotes Pichai as say, "and I don't see any reason why that would be different in China." The report says Brin "sounded optimistic about doing more business in China" but that Brin called progress in the country "slow-going and complicated."
According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, Google addressed the issue of China at this week's all-hands meeting. The report says CEO Sundar Pichai told employees the company was "not close to launching a search product" in China but that Pichai thinks Google can do good by engaging with China. "I genuinely do believe we have a positive impact when we engage around the world," The Journal quotes Pichai as say, "and I don't see any reason why that would be different in China." The report says Brin "sounded optimistic about doing more business in China" but that Brin called progress in the country "slow-going and complicated."
Claim the controversial project is not near completion.
Wait a few months for the sheep to lose concentration and have it drift beyond their attention span.
Then, quietly do it with a small elite staff.
When people complain, say, "Well, it's a done deal now, we can't back out or we'd lose money!"
Everyone knows that is bad and unpopular, so no one will support that. We are herd animals.
Moooo.
Alternative Right.
Apparently they're only cool with censoring their own conservative employees.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Don't send our thought police overseas when they are badly needed to carry out political censorship at home, especially before the elections!
I think China is perfectly capable of spying on its own people without Googles help.
"Not close to launching" is not a denial of working on a censored and surveilled product. To be fair though, if that's what the local law require then they have no choice if they want to make a buck, excuse me, "engage with" such a country.
Its likely Google's Chinese employees are far more practical about this than Google USA employees.
Of course Chinese workers all unite to praise Glorious Leader Xi Jinping's glorious censorship program....or else.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I believe it's called Googleplex.
Ezekiel 23:20
The Right censors those who act against social standards; the Left censors those who fail to be Leftist enough.
Most of our conservatives, in the context of history, are fairly Left-leaning. They support egalitarianism in politics and society; the only area they do not support it is the economy, where they insist on free markets instead of enforced socioeconomic equality.
Fear not; the Left is targeting that next.
Eventually they will win, and produce a socialist society. The good people will all die off, and the proles will have their triumph. Then, that society will slide into third-world status because it is ruled by morons commanding other morons, and so it will vanish from the pages of history because it is irrelevant.
This is what Leftism does: it destroys civilizations.
Alternative Right.
More importantly, those who do not praise the Chinese State tend to fail at a form of natural selection, mainly by experiencing 7.62mm tumors at the base of the skull. Therefore, they no longer exist on Chinese development teams, and everyone else eats their rice.
Alternative Right.
It seems harder to find non-cucked conservative content on Google of late, at least without highly specific searches (for example, phrases you know are in the article).
Alternative Right.
Who do you have in mind here, and how are they censoring them?
Alternative Right.
For a company whose first rule was "don't be evil," they sure have being pretty evil lately. I wonder if some of those Google employees are now asking themselves if they want to keep working at a place where they've had to revolt twice in less than a year (The first one being over AI in military contracts.)
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Note the total lack of the biggest tech story in months, if not all year: the deplatforming of Alex Jones.
How totally outrageous it is for Slashdot not to run any story about it. It's been a major topic of discussion dead square in the center of Slashdot's subject matter.
You can't let that one slide without making some kind of judgement, unless you're truly brainless.
There is a conspiracy against free speech, especially conservative speech, perpetrated by all of big tech and the main stream media working in unison. You would have to be brain dead not to be suspicious and perhaps reconsider your stance in politics, because this conspiracy is as filthy as they come and is slapping you in the face.
The brazenness of this conspiracy is getting to be unbelievable. It's like the perpetrators are completely confident that thinking people are a total non-factor.
The economy relies on 'tech' workers more than any other. YOU have power, so long as you are willing to stand up. If educated people with the wits to see what's going on would leverage their value to the economy (i.e.: mass strikes) we could ensure a functional democratic process.
Will you choose to be a non-factor when the time comes?
Futile. The force of business is such that the massive Chinese market will eventually determine the course of events, and the blowback from China will become greater and greater. Google may try to separate out the West and the East, but eventually China will demand changes even in Google's Western attitude and programming. Or, just the expense and difficulty of maintaining two worldviews and code sources will cause Google to eventually make a business decision to make the Chinese way the only way. More than likely both of these things will work together to make Google a force for oppression and denial of freedoms and rights in the West. But hey, it's nothing personal, just business.
E Proelio Veritas.
They are becoming the corporate equivalent of the Evergreen College. The investors should be calling for Pichai's head. The employees in non-leadership positions should not be dictating the company's direction by mob rule.
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Hippie Logger Jock
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Quote context from the Breitbart article:
"A document brought to light by James Damore’s class-action lawsuit against Google and drafted by the company’s HR department instructing managers at the company on how to be “inclusive” cautioned managers against rewarding employees for traits “valued by the U.S. white/male dominant culture”, including individual achievement, and meritocracy."