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Google's Secret China Project 'Effectively Ended' After Internal Confrontation: Report (theintercept.com)
Less than five months after Google's plan to build a censored search engine and other tools for the Chinese market became public, the company has "effectively ended" the project, reports The Intercept. From the report: Google has been forced to shut down a data analysis system it was using to develop a censored search engine for China after members of the company's privacy team raised internal complaints that it had been kept secret from them, The Intercept has learned. The internal rift over the system has had massive ramifications, effectively ending work on the censored search engine, known as Dragonfly, according to two sources familiar with the plans. The incident represents a major blow to top Google executives, including CEO Sundar Pichai, who have over the last two years made the China project one of their main priorities.
The dispute began in mid-August, when the The Intercept revealed that Google employees working on Dragonfly had been using a Beijing-based website to help develop blacklists for the censored search engine, which was designed to block out broad categories of information related to democracy, human rights, and peaceful protest, in accordance with strict rules on censorship in China that are enforced by the country's authoritarian Communist Party government.
The dispute began in mid-August, when the The Intercept revealed that Google employees working on Dragonfly had been using a Beijing-based website to help develop blacklists for the censored search engine, which was designed to block out broad categories of information related to democracy, human rights, and peaceful protest, in accordance with strict rules on censorship in China that are enforced by the country's authoritarian Communist Party government.
No way is Google ending this. Spin it off into its own company, maybe not even part of Alphabet, but no way does Google just walk away from China.
what part of "don't be evil" did the C-suite forget about?
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
I get the feeling that there is too much "ambition" (greed) in play here to simply walk away. Instead, it seems like they put this on the back burner until people stop paying attention and then start things going again with a smaller team.
Scruples seem to be in short supply among executives and board members when it comes to getting a piece of the China pie.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
The CEO should be fired for supporting oppression.
That is all.
Money, uh, finds a way.
The right way to do this is to disperse the team, have the architects break down their idea into a bunch of pieces, create a spec, and have each on its own being mostly benign. Then they assemble them, file bug reports where the pieces don't match spec, and eventually end up with the final project done with no one the wiser.
They evidently have a core team who absolutely doesn't give a fuck about ethics, they just messed up because there was a turd in the punchbowl.
Too bad Google has the man in charge that they do. He misrepresented everything to Congress and at the same time had building a Big Brother search engine for China as one of his main goals. Get rid of this guy and bring in someone with a sense of ethics.
That is not how it really works though.
Right now its plainly obvious to everyone that
1) They don't enjoy the information access the rest of the world does
2) They government is responsible
3) Things are better elsewhere
When you give people a 'good enough' alternative there are those who might believe:
1) The have access to most information, what is censored is really just awful stuff they'd have no interest in
2) The government is helping them or at least not hindering
3) Things are probably like this everywhere.
Right now with the Great Firewall and crapy Bidu; the Part has a tight grip on the internet - but some things slip thru their fingers. Letting Google et al play might seem like a loosening of that grip but really it will be a more insidious form of control; and the people who NEED to find ways around will find few allies to help them.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
They publicly stopped it, will rename it and swear to secrecy the next group of folks who will be working on it.
No way they will give up that market so easily.
I really hope that Google employees pay attention and complete the killing of this project regardless of whatever it morphs into. They're basically saving the company from itself.
First off, I completely agree with the human-rights angle here. China isn't the worst player on the planet. Not by a long shot. However, they are far from being the best. In the long run, it's better for Google to stay away from supporting Chinese internet. History would NOT judge them kindly for taking part in something that's widely recognized as a pretty oppressive system. Their leadership is seriously blinded by short term profit if they don't see this.
However, I seriously question the possibility of ANY profit from this project, period. Who in their right mind thinks that China would turn internet search over to a non-Chinese company? really? reeeealllllly? Google executives appear to have forgotten that China is only half capitalist. The other half is iron-fisted state-directed economics. Okay, the Chinese government MIGHT be willing to cede some extreme minority of the search market to Google, but only in exchange for complete control, the source code, and every other piece of tech that Google has ever developed. In exchange for about 1% of their search market, I'm sure. What a colossally dumb idea. This is what the Google executives were making a priority? Really?
It's just one more data point showing that top executives are mostly regular or slightly-above-average schmoes who lucked into the position. They aren't geniuses and they don't have any kind of extraordinary ability. They are successful business types who were in the right place at the right time. Nothing more.