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Google Faces Renewed Protests and Criticism Over China Search Project (theintercept.com)
On Friday, a coalition of Chinese, Tibetan, Uighur, and human rights groups organized demonstrations outside Google's offices in the U.S., U.K., Canada, India, Mexico, Chile, Argentina, Sweden, Switzerland, and Denmark, protesting the company's plan to launch a censored version of its search engine in China. The Intercept reports: Google designed the Chinese search engine, code-named Dragonfly, to blacklist information about human rights, democracy, religion, and peaceful protest, in accordance with strict rules on censorship in China that are enforced by the country's authoritarian Communist Party government. In December, The Intercept revealed that an internal dispute had forced Google to shut down a data analysis system that it was using to develop the search engine. This had "effectively ended" the project, sources said, because the company's engineers no longer had the tools they needed to build it.
But Google bosses have not publicly stated that they will cease development of Dragonfly. And the company's CEO Sundar Pichai has refused to rule out potentially launching the search engine some time in the future, though he has insisted that there are no current plans to do so. The organizers of Friday's protests -- which were timed to coincide with Internet Freedom Day -- said that they would continue to demonstrate "until Google executives confirm that Project Dragonfly has been canceled, once and for all." Google "should be connecting the world through the sharing of information, not facilitating human rights abuses by a repressive government determined to crush all forms of peaceful online dissent," said Gloria Montgomery, director at Tibet Society UK. "Google's directors must urgently take heed of calls from employees and tens of thousands of global citizens demanding that they immediately halt project Dragonfly. If they don't, Google risks irreversible damage to its reputation."
But Google bosses have not publicly stated that they will cease development of Dragonfly. And the company's CEO Sundar Pichai has refused to rule out potentially launching the search engine some time in the future, though he has insisted that there are no current plans to do so. The organizers of Friday's protests -- which were timed to coincide with Internet Freedom Day -- said that they would continue to demonstrate "until Google executives confirm that Project Dragonfly has been canceled, once and for all." Google "should be connecting the world through the sharing of information, not facilitating human rights abuses by a repressive government determined to crush all forms of peaceful online dissent," said Gloria Montgomery, director at Tibet Society UK. "Google's directors must urgently take heed of calls from employees and tens of thousands of global citizens demanding that they immediately halt project Dragonfly. If they don't, Google risks irreversible damage to its reputation."
I do my best. I will not use Chrome, or Google Search, or anything else Google if I can possibly help it. Of course, half the web sites out there have Google Ads and analytics and whatnot. But the web is just about over anyway. Tragedy of the commons.
Meanwhile, Apple has the equivalent of a Social Score (they track calls and emails), removed all apps that bypass censorship in China while also granting China full control of iCloud Data (including daily Face Shots and GPS)... this is just for starters.
They do have colorful ads that keep telling us how much they value privacy while they purposely track, data-mine, data-horde and report on every single user of their ecosystem. They have become China's Great (digital) Wall. The MSM... silent.
Google is an example of a company that was ruined by money. They had a great mission, "Organize the world's information." Now they have lost track of that in their pursuit of advertising dollars. I think if they had remained smaller, and kept their goal to be "organize the world's information," they would be a better company today. "Better" of course being different than the stock market's usage of "most profitable."
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
It is a problem when you can't boycott the "do no evil" company because there is no competition.
There is Baidu.
Why do all the countries and non-Chinese seem to want a say in what services Chinese people get access to?
Because the "Chinese Model" of authoritarian state capitalism is the biggest challenge to Western liberal democracy. It is an enticing model to the leaders of many developing countries who want prosperity without freedom.
It isn't just about China, it is about the future of humanity.
Why is not having Google there to provide info better than having them there?
It isn't. Google should stay in China. It is better them to be there and be engaged. The idealism of the protesters is misdirected.
they're a Kleptocracy at best. Their "president" just gave himself more or less unlimited power. You can't really ask them what they want.
Thing is the world's turned a blind eye to China abusing it's people for the sake of cheap consumer goods since Nixon. Not sure why we care now.
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