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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."
You thought the censored version was just for China?
In the west, Google can only gather (and monetize) user data so much, before there starts to be public outcry, pushback, and Congressional hearings about them invading privacy to an unacceptable degree.
In China, Google can gather user data as much as it wants, and gathering more leads to ambivalence from the public (because they're used to it) and praise from the local government. They get to play out their dream of having every search be tied to a person; and of course every site that includes code from google analytics, doubleclick etc. is tied to that, so they'll know many sites that each person goes to (all, if they use Chrome or Android).
The proven most-effective pieces of personal data to harvest will be back-ported to Google's services around the rest of the world.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Deplatform Google. Hit them in the wallet, it's all they understand.
"we would not sell technology to the nazis would we? but before anyone else does, we wil sell to the nazis ..." also "we feel obliged to think hard about this problem and take a longer-term view" pretty much means "fuck you we will do it and we dont care about your concerns". this machine kills .. it will collect data and will get you killed.
As Google already has a lot of experience censoring US search results, they're a natural to cooperate with the Communist Party of China. The whole brouhaha started when Google was going to use its power of search to bring down the CPC. This was at the time of the color revolutions and Google was feeling its oats. Moreover they still had the "Don't Be Evil" motto back then. Ah, memories.
With Google's proven expertise in censorship and new-found willingness to be evil, I see a happy and prosperous future ahead for the CPC. They're going to need it, China is heading for a rocky time and they'll need every bit of help they can get repressing their own people.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Pichai: "People don't understand fully, but you're always balancing a set of values,"
Yeah, right. On one side "Human Rights" values and on the other "Money".
We clearly know your balances...
China is an oppressive dictatorship that uses censorship to control its people. America is a democracy that values free and open information. Google values free and open information. Who is that Google wants to help and who is it that Google refuses to help?
This is f'd up.