As a former Google employee myself, I have a really hard time connecting these actions with the company I used to be very proud of working for.<p>I understand that reaching the Chinese consumer is a huge opportunity, but drawing the line at refusing to assist in the censorship of 1.4 billion people seemed like an easy line to draw and stick to. If Google won't stand against this, won't the rest tumble? I fear a domino affect that won't be possible to undo.<p>For the first time in a long time, I am genuinely disappointing at Google and am questioning thoughts I've had in the past of going back to work for them again.
Google is already censoring content in the US and EU, not even the same results in all countries, and we asked for it, so what's so much different about following Chinese law?
There seems to be a hypocrisy with people upset about censorship on behalf of China, but don’t seem all that upset about censorship on behalf of the EU (eg RTBF) or censorship when it supports their politics (eg hate speech)<p>I don’t support this theoretical move, but asserting Google should pull out/stay out of China and not obey/comply with local laws, and yet argue that the EU local laws should have global reach seems unjustified and unequal respect for sovereignty.
Reality check: nobody use a mobile app for searching purpose. So either the whistleblower is misleaded, or it's a slightly different app than just search.
Pity so many corporations in our industry harvested good will of their users, expecting to never help their oppressors, and a decade later here we are :(
What is wrong with this? It is as if Google spider bot sits within China.<p>What is the use of showing the result, if the users can't access the content? It makes sense to filter the result than showing an 'unauthorised' error on clicking the link.
First the military drones, now getting in bed with China, and the law straw was removing almost every mention of "Don't be evil" from its workers' code of conduct manual.<p>I think it's pretty clear at this point Google is willing to sell their own mothers (and your data) just to keep those profitable quarters up for many more years.<p>As more advertisers start preferring Facebook, I think Google will become even more desperate in regards to what it will be willing to do to increase revenue and profits quarter after quarter. Expect many big "evil" things to come from Google in the near future.
I think the original article deserves the URL spot.
<a href="https://theintercept.com/2018/08/01/google-china-search-engine-censorship/" rel="nofollow">https://theintercept.com/2018/08/01/google-china-search-engi...</a>
There seems to be a hypocrisy with people upset about censorship on behalf of China, but don’t seem all that upset about censorship on behalf of the EU (eg RTBF) or censorship when it supports their politics (eg hate speech)<p>I don’t support this theoretical move, but asserting Google should pull out/stay out of China and not obey/comply with local laws, and yet argue that the EU local laws should have global reach seems unjustified and unequal respect for sovereignty.<p>Let’s face it, the core issue here isn’t free speech and censorship, it’s speech you like or censorship you like vs those you don’t.