Google's CEO Says Tests of Censored Chinese Search Engine Have Been Very Promising (theverge.com)

At Wired's 25th anniversary summit, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said the company's internal tests developing a censored search engine in China have been very promising. Pichai is strengthening his commitment on the controversial search engine, codenamed Project Dragonfly, saying the potential to expose the world to more information is guiding Google's push into China. "We are compelled by our mission [to] provide information to everyone, and [China is] 20 percent of the world's population." Wired reports: Pichai was careful to emphasize that this was a decision that weighs heavy on the company. "People don't understand fully, but you're always balancing a set of values," in every new country, he said. Those values include providing access to information, freedom of expression, and user privacy. "But we also follow the rule of law in every country," he said. This is a reversal of a decision from about eight years, when Google pulled its search engine, which was also censored, from the Chinese market. Pichai said the time had come to reevaluate that choice. "It's a wonderful, innovative market. We wanted to learn what it would look like if we were in China, so that's what we built internally," Pichai said. "Given how important the market is and how many users there are," he added, "we feel obliged to think hard about this problem and take a longer-term view." In response to the company's decision to back out of a project with the Department of Defense, nicknamed Project Maven, to build AI and facial recognition technology, and the employee concerns surrounding it, Pichai said: "Throughout Google's history, we've given our employees a lot of voice and say. But we don't run the company by holding referendums. It's an important input. We take it seriously." On the issue of Maven, however, "it's more also the debate within the AI Community around how you perceive our work in the area."

Comments

Wait...WHAT?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, the system they're NOT developing and not going to use to help one of the most evil governments on Earth oppress people is moving further along throught the development process and the testing is looking good? (or is that "bad" since it's intended for extreme evil?)

Note to Google: 70+ years after WWII, IBM is still thought of by many as evil because they knowingly helped the NAZI regime procees the paperwork in their oppression program. Rolling the dice on China ia a HUGE gamble. If China ends up as the planet's big global superpower, you will brielfy be a rich part of tha machine (until they absorb you or replace you with a domestic alternative using tech reversed from your stuff). If on the other hand, China eventually fails as all such oppressive dictatorial governments do, you will become a global paraiah and your emplyees will be viewed like former Klansmen or NAZI collaborators.

Google is rolling the dice

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm amazed that Google wants to play this dangerous game. Who will benefit most is yet to be seen (sure as fuck won't be the plebs worldwide).

China will eventually access and copy every bit of Google's data when they place on-site servers with the proper credentials to access anything stateside. This may really be a trap for China to suck away all of Google's information, not the other way around.

That is, if they aren't already being partially blackmailed into this move because someone stateside already managed to steal Google's data (including the employee stuff). (Only partial blackmail because China's abundance of data and few limits on what to collect is the devil's own temptation for these corps.)

I sure wouldn't want to be the people setting this up, it's playing with fire no matter how you look at it.

Re:Feature Not Bug

[AmiMoJo]

In China the domestic platforms already do all that and more. For example WePay is pretty much the universal way to pay for stuff now, even random street vendors accept it right up to luxury hotels. Of course all the search and social media platforms monitor and allow the government full access. So the situation with regards to privacy is already dire.

In Europe Google has some of the strongest privacy controls of any major service. Way better than Facebook and Microsoft, for example. From what I read it's not too dissimilar in the US. You can go here to see the available controls: https://myaccount.google.com/p...

So while it is possible that Google will abandon all that stuff for the Chinese market it's not certain, and perhaps we should at least see what they are proposing/doing first. If they did launch with even half those privacy controls it would be a huge deal for the Chinese market, making privacy a thing that people think and care about.

Re:well google

[Anonymous Coward]

People on Slashdot think too narrowly.

You cannot shut off China's totalitarianism. It's too well entrenched and the truth is many Chinese historically prefer a harmonious society rather than an American definition of a free one. The only way to change it is gradually.

If China doesn't have Google build this system, then they'll hire Alibaba or Tencent to do it. With Google doing it, an American company has the technology there, meaning there's an option to understand what is going on and possibly influence it. There is no option if Alibaba or Tencent does it.

Standing by morals to the point where you have no ability to implement your morals is just stupid and unethical.

Re:F Google, use DuckDuckGo

[AmiMoJo]

I tried their example of searching for "car", which they claim does not track you. I can't post the URL of the advert as plain text due to the lameness filter, so you will have to hover over the following:

ad link

So we have a bounce through yahoo.com, who do track you, "dartsearch.net" which is part of the DoubleClick network, a unique "ad_provider" ID and what looks like a number of other IDs. Also, it's HTTP, not even HTTPS, so now your ISP/employer has that data too.

Finally, the link that you claim says they curate ads actually says

By default, when you sign up for a Bing Ads account, your ads should automatically enter rotation into all of Bing's distribution channels including DuckDuckGo.

In other words they throw up whatever Bing deems to be okay.