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Google CEO Tells Senators That Censored Chinese Search Engine Could Provide 'Broad Benefits' (theintercept.com)
Google CEO Sundar Pichai has refused to answer a list of questions from U.S. lawmakers about the company's secretive plan for a censored search engine in China. From a report: In a letter newly obtained by The Intercept, Pichai told a bipartisan group of six senators that Google could have "broad benefits inside and outside of China," but said he could not share details about the censored search engine because it "remains unclear" whether the company "would or could release a search service" in the country. Pichai's letter contradicts the company's search engine chief, Ben Gomes, who informed staff during a private meeting that the company was aiming to release the platform in China between January and April 2019. Gomes told employees working on the Chinese search engine that they should get it ready to be "brought off the shelf and quickly deployed."
[...] In his letter to the senators, dated August 31, Pichai did not mention the word "censorship" or address human rights concerns. He told the senators that "providing access to information to people around the world is central to our mission," and said he believed Google's tools could "help to facilitate an exchange of information and learning." The company was committed to "promoting access to information, freedom of expression, and user privacy," he wrote, while also "respecting the laws of jurisdictions in which we operate."
[...] In his letter to the senators, dated August 31, Pichai did not mention the word "censorship" or address human rights concerns. He told the senators that "providing access to information to people around the world is central to our mission," and said he believed Google's tools could "help to facilitate an exchange of information and learning." The company was committed to "promoting access to information, freedom of expression, and user privacy," he wrote, while also "respecting the laws of jurisdictions in which we operate."
In his letter to the senators, dated August 31, Pichai did not mention the word "censorship" or address human rights concerns.
Yeah, they try to talk around what they do in the US too, always using a euphemism like "filtering" instead.
Rationalizing like the damned (that they are)
Just. Wow, Google. You're up there in the Big Leagues now, Google, right alongside R.J. Reynolds, Monsanto, and Mylan.
You have to admit, it's an impressive amount of internal mental hacking necessary to compartmentalize your own ethics, morals, and values, so you can reap as much profit as possible, regardless of the consequences to everyone else. I can't imagine being able to do that. I will admit that I've thought more than once that the only thing standing between me and being wealthy, is this pesky 'conscience' I've got. Well done, Google, well done.
</extreme_sarcasm>
(included for the clueless who don't understand)
What's the sense of refusing to provide any information on the basis that they're not allowed to provide certain additional information?
Moral principles where you don't help in the oppression of people just to make a buck?
Of course. The benefits are to Google's bottom line not the people of China.
Of course. The benefits are to Google's bottom line not the people of China.
The benefits are to Google's employee political ideology too. They can censor all that "offensive" stuff in the US too, help ensure that the "correct" people are elected to office.
Seriously, we already have internal emails where they propose and/or try to do this. Won't having this new censorship technology facilitate such desires?
Google isn't considering selling the censorship technology. Logically, any google search product can only add (however slightly) to the pool of information available to people in China. What's the sense of refusing to provide any information on the basis that they're not allowed to provide certain additional information? They already thoroughly tested whether packing up their bag and leaving would pressure China into changing laws -- it didn't.
Censorship is a red herring that Google and China hope the world focuses on. Censorship by Google in China is just a distraction, and as Google and friends would point out, any little bit of any information served up by Google technically constitutes breaking the technical censorship that Google's absence from the Chinese market represents. That such an argument makes sense to some people is literally quite perverse.
Surveillance and collaborating with Chinese authorities to identify "undesirable" people is the problem. Google is being allowed to trade ratting out people in exchange for money. That the Chinese government gets to see Google squirm with PR issues in the US is just icing on the cake.