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Google Is Still Working on China Search Engine, Employees Claim
Google is still pursuing its plan to launch a censored search engine for China, The Intercept reported Monday, citing unnamed employees. From the report: Late last year, bosses moved engineers away from working on the controversial project, known as Dragonfly, and said that there were no current plans to launch it. However, a group of employees at the company was unsatisfied with the lack of information from leadership on the issue -- and took matters into their own hands. The group has identified ongoing work on a batch of code that is associated with the China search engine, according to three Google sources. [...] The employees have been keeping tabs on repositories of code that are stored on Google's computers, which they say is linked to Dragonfly. The code was created for two smartphone search apps -- named Maotai and Longfei -- that Google planned to roll out in China for users of Android and iOS mobile devices.
Perhaps a novel compromise
Wow... talk about not understanding how authoritarianism works.
In China, you do things their way; no highway option.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
If you disagree with China's policies regarding censorship, why would you want Google to stop?
Because the second it's complete, other nations will suddenly demand their own. This is about more than just China.
If you stop the project entirely, then you don't have a seat at the table and China will make it on their own.
They already have... and it's based on old stolen IP from Google.
At least Google gets to influence direction and build a level of comfort in that over time can help them ease up on their control.
In an authoritarian regime that is hellbent on becoming a massive exporter of goods by 2025? Please, don't make me laugh.
China's approach to free speech is extremely different than most Western thoughts on this, but when understood in the context of their history is completely understandable.
China's only approach to free speech has been to crush it. The people who want to speak the truth a jailed and/or killed. I don't think anyone in China wants to be jailed or killed.
China has gone through several cycles over the past several thousand years where affluence and economic growth leads to a cultural mismatch between classes, that often results in a period of major wars, destruction and death. The Chinese government knows this, and they know they're currently headed to one of those cycles again, as about 400M people live in a decent middle class lifestyle and about 900M people live in poverty today.
They should keep doing the same thing but you are expecting a different outcome? Perhaps it's time for a new approach. Taiwan is doing quite well. Seems like maybe that's the better model to follow.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Tesla gave away its EV tech patents royalty-free, to try to speed up the overall transition to EVs by letting other competing companies use their tech specs for free.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?