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Only a few of the search behemoth's 88,000 workers were briefed on the project before The Intercept reported on 1 August that Google had plans to launch a censored mobile search app for the Chinese market, with no access to sites about human rights, democracy, religion or peaceful protest.
The customised Android search app, with different versions known as Maotai and Longfei, was said to have been demonstrated to Chinese Government authorities.
In a related development, six US senators from both parties were reported to have sent a letter to Google chief executive Sundar Pichai, demanding an explanation over the company's move.
One source inside Google, who witnessed the backlash from employees after news of the plan was reported, told The Intercept: "Everyone's access to documents got turned off, and is being turned on [on a] document-by-document basis.
"There's been total radio silence from leadership, which is making a lot of people upset and scared. ... Our internal meme site and Google Plus are full of talk, and people are a.n.g.r.y."
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Mykl on Tuesday August 07 2018, @12:51AM (35 children)
Google was such a darling of the tech world back in the day. A champion of Open Source, defender of the weak etc, it's "Do no evil" motto garnered it a huge amount of praise in technology and privacy circles.
These days, Google can hardly call themselves better than Facebook, who have always been about selling you out the highest bidder for those sweet, dirty dollars. I can imagine the shitstorm that this latest stunt must've triggered within the organisation - would not be at all surprised if a large number of job openings start appearing very soon.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday August 07 2018, @01:07AM (10 children)
Google is a business, and answers to the sharemarket like any other business. If management decide to not offer search in China I imagine shareholders would want to know why they would leave so much money on the table.
If you want to do business in China, you have to play by China's rules which include all sorts of censorship. Try searching for Winnie the Pooh from China and see how you go.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Mykl on Tuesday August 07 2018, @02:15AM (8 children)
Yes, it's a business. However, by deciding to buy their way into China, Google has damaged their reputation in other markets (in my opinion, probably losing more than they gained). I doubt that the Faustian bargain they just made will prove to be worth it.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday August 07 2018, @02:58AM (2 children)
There might be a few people like you, who take a principled stand, but I suspect the vast majority either don't understand, or don't care.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Tuesday August 07 2018, @06:10AM
And a lot of the principled people, Google already lost anyway.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday August 07 2018, @06:49AM
It's not necessarily a matter of principle. Do you trust a search engine company that has expressed so much willingness to censor search results in China to not ALSO censor search results it may return to you?
If so, why?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Tuesday August 07 2018, @03:37AM
Your opinion looks more like wishful thinking.
Google is eating the consumer privacy on every second basis for practically as long as they existed. And the loss of privacy affects each consumer personally - have you seen a consumer exodus away from Google because of that? No?
And you think the consumers will give a damn about the censored search in China Google plans to offer, a thing that does not affect any consumer in non-Chinese markets? I mean... really?
Yes, I know consumers aren't the customers, they are the merchandise. However, the customers/shareholders are sensible only to the number of consumers; as long as this number stay high, I don't think I'll ever see customers/shareholders objecting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by lentilla on Tuesday August 07 2018, @06:03AM (3 children)
What is worth remembering is that China has 1.511 billion people. That's "only" twice the population of Europe, or "only" 4.6 times the population of the United States. Yes, selling out makes you look (a little) bad, but nothing that can't be spin-doctored away, and certainly not enough to ignore that absolutely massive untapped market.
Google also faces a secondary problem - if they don't expand into China, a Chinese competitor will simply eat Google.
Now ask yourself the question: which master would you prefer? Google - now a company of questionable ethics, or "Chinese Google" - a company with "different" ethics and squarely in the pocket of the world's largest totalitarian government?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Tuesday August 07 2018, @12:44PM (2 children)
Neither. You present a false dilemma. Let us also keep in mind that Chinese Google will happen simply because China won't allow for Google to obtain a dominant position no matter how much Google attempts to appease China.
(Score: 2) by lentilla on Wednesday August 08 2018, @02:51AM (1 child)
Technically - yes - it is a false dilemma (and not a particularly ingenious one at that). Practically speaking; however; this is the actual dilemma that we face - and that is why I presented it as such.
In a way, this is a real problem with capitalism - the end-game appears to be monopoly or at best oligopoly. In an ideal world, capitalism has many players competing but what actually happens is one of the players buys out the competition until only a one or two remain.
You are also quite correct in stating that China will not allow Google to obtain a dominant position in the Chinese market. Google's best efforts will simply slow down the inevitable. They will be tolerated; for now; providing they make the required "reasonable accommodations".
Unsporting as it might be, the West really needs to have a good, hard think about foreign ownership - otherwise we will end up ceding control of our assets, infrastructure and lives - and we won't notice it until it's too late because it is happening little by little.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday August 08 2018, @03:53AM
I disagree. It's just not that hard to create a search engine. It just isn't that profitable at present to create endless numbers of them.
Unless, of course, the end game appears to be something else. The problem here is that there are so many confounding factors that have nothing to do with capitalism messing up the situation. My view is that oligopoly may be an end-game for capitalism, but it's not that bad for end games nor the worst way that monopolies and oligopolies get created.
For example, if one looks at the highest rates of creation of monopolies, oligopolies, and such, it's not the Gilded Age that stands out, but the early years of the FDR administration which created legal cartels in hundreds of industries over the course of a few years. Even when such cartels were undone (and they weren't always undone), the result was often a more stagnant and uncreative industry, such as the automotive, airlines, shipbuilding, broadcast, and movie industries. Labor unions are another example with virtually no competition. That wasn't capitalism that created that mess.
Today, we have a huge regulatory burden that naturally favors large businesses over small. This is going to create natural dynamics that result in oligopoly situations.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 07 2018, @03:09AM
Aren't they still controlled by the founders? In that sense, they are not like most other public companies.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 07 2018, @01:19AM (21 children)
I think they've jumped the shark a long time ago, but let's look at this TFS for a bit:
Could be because Google felt it was not relevant to the job of the remaining 87 000 workers.
"Need to know" in a corporate environment. What an unusual concept!
Newsflash: You aren't still in school anymore, where you could threaten someone with ostracism from the autists' club if he had expressed views that the hive did not share. AFAIK, the only ones at Google who have a say at all is senior leadership and VC people, who keep the only shares with real voting power. I can imagine them getting rather annoyed having to corral entitled nerds.
TLDR: If you don't like what your employer is getting involved in, man up and find another place to work.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday August 07 2018, @02:17AM (2 children)
It should be noted that Google seeks out, then caters to, kooky people. They have liberal policies, so they seek out liberal minded people. What else can you expect in such an environment?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 07 2018, @02:31AM (1 child)
Really no need to state the obvious, but: A lot of bitching, moaning and virtue signalling.
(Score: 3, Touché) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday August 07 2018, @04:51PM
Really no need to state the obvious, but: A lot of bitching, moaning and virtue signalling.
You can only justify your own lack of convictions by pretending others have none as well.
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Tuesday August 07 2018, @02:20AM (11 children)
A lot of the brilliant minds that work there are doing so under the belief that the company is more egalitarian and transparent than they have been over this. It's going to lead toward some of those brilliant minds leaving to work elsewhere.
I'm fine with corporate needing to manage from the top, and to keep things "need to know", but if you change the employee value proposition (or their understanding of the EVP) from under their feet, prepare for some of those employees to check out (mentally and/or physically).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 07 2018, @02:28AM (1 child)
How many of the "brilliant minds" there have been hired to do rather mundane tasks as directed by their supervisor? Perhaps if they had more "settled minds", they would spend more time working on their tasks, rather than trying to be brilliant on internal meme sites.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday August 07 2018, @12:52PM
Even if that were somehow relevant, mundane is relative. Everything is mundane to the sufficiently jaded eye.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday August 07 2018, @03:45AM (8 children)
Haven't seen anything outstandingly innovative coming out of Google in the last couple of years. **
I wonder what those brilliant mind actually do there? Are there still a significant number of them or did they already left long ago.
** AI by NN on a large scale (the TensorFlow) is the last thing I remember. Designing some dedicated chips for the job is a matter of engineering rather than innovation.
Self-driving car? Slowly grinding ahead - yes, that's the nature of the problem - but does it require brilliant minds?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by khallow on Tuesday August 07 2018, @04:13AM (7 children)
Only if you define innovation to mean something like Buckaroo Banzai where you slap the ball-point ink formula on some dude's head and it happens. Real world innovation is the process of making those ideas work.
My last self-driving car didn't require any brilliant minds. But then, it didn't exist either.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday August 07 2018, @05:00AM (6 children)
Context [xkcd.com]: "outstanding innovation"
It could appear I said otherwise only if you ignore the context.
If you won't ever get a self-driving car, I'm pretty sure the cause will not stay with Google launching a censored search in China.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by khallow on Tuesday August 07 2018, @01:06PM (5 children)
Sorry, still don't buy it. Designing a chip to optimize a theoretical neural network language is still pretty damn outstanding and innovative.
Remember that context thing? You mentioned self-driving cars which brought them into the scope of our conversation.
I'll note also that we don't currently have effective self-driving cars for the masses despite more than a century of developing cars, and some projections make them quite revolutionary. So getting something like that to work and distributed to the masses sounds to me like it qualifies for outstanding innovation.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday August 07 2018, @01:28PM (4 children)
As you were. I'm not selling it, thus don't you fret about.
Over and out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday August 07 2018, @01:36PM (3 children)
Your fingers are monkeys on the keyboard and these things just come out. Shakespearean sonnets could be next.
(Score: 3, Funny) by c0lo on Tuesday August 07 2018, @01:45PM (2 children)
But thou contracted to thine own bright eyes,
Feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel,
Making a famine where abundance lies,
Thy self thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday August 07 2018, @01:55PM (1 child)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Tuesday August 07 2018, @02:17PM
What are the chances? (compute the probability distribution)
Or... maybe it's a case of "self-fulfilling prophecy" and the "Totally asked for it" would be closer to the truth?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 07 2018, @02:28AM (5 children)
Precisely. This is what happens when you kowtow to a bunch of self important, entitled nerds. They think they have a say when in reality they are only wage slaves and just don't yet realize it. When you placate a toddler by catering to his whims, all you do is encourage him to throw more and bigger tantrums. The tech world needs to come to terms with this and show their troublesome SJWs to the door.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 07 2018, @02:44AM (2 children)
Awwww, did google toss your resume in the garbage can? You must think it is SJW's fault. Too bad and suck it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 07 2018, @03:26AM (1 child)
From where I sit they look like they are being censors. They have decided what is 'good/bad' on the internet.
The internet routes around censorship. Always has, always will. It just takes time.
But when you have a 150k salary you say 'well maybe they are not bad'. No, they are bad. I personally work for a company that is as bad as they get. I look the other way because they pay a lot. Google is no longer a 'startup darling' it is a behemoth that is unsure where to go after search and advertising. So they are trying their will at the geeks favorite pastime since GIF got submarine patented started, politics. They are smart so therefor their way is the best. It is the smart person fallacy. Once you realize it is a cognitive bias you can move on in your life.
Go ahead keep on defending the keepers of the faith. They do pay well don't they? They make sure you feel smart? Don't they? You sold out. But you have arranged it in your brain that it is OK. I too have sold out (for more than google was offering). But I do not pretend my company is some bastion of what is good in the world. But it pays very well, is intellectually stimulating, and I go home to my family at 5.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 07 2018, @04:34AM
Whoa dude. I don't work for google. They are evil. Sorry to hear that you sold out and work for an evil company. I just get fucking tired of SJW and also people whinging about SJW. It goes on and on. Half of the idiots can't even spell SJW and the other half doesn't know what one is. Many SJWs don't know either. Enjoy your important work!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 07 2018, @02:44AM (1 child)
They are not slaves. They are free to leave. And with the fabled Silicon Valley marketplace, that may not be such a hard thing to do.
But Google is not the workers' slave either. It is only theirs to the extent of the voting rights of their shares. And by that structure it is obvious that The People Running Google did not want to be a "everyone gets a say" org. When management tries to obtain new business, business which could create demand for more workers, and employees start bitching - perhaps it is time they rid themselves of those meddlesome people, as soon as they can. Goes without saying that "do no evil" has already been dropped in the memory hole by now.
(Score: 2) by Oakenshield on Tuesday August 07 2018, @03:35PM
They are free to leave and sign up for another servitude. You misunderstand the nature of being a "wage slave." Unless you can leave and survive without requiring a paycheck, you are indeed a "slave" to your "wages", i.e. a wage slave
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Murdoc on Tuesday August 07 2018, @01:30AM (1 child)
Google jumped the shark a long time ago. This is just some more people starting to notice it. It's like a lot of bad things that happen, not everyone notices it at first. Only as things become worse do they start to become aware of it, either because they weren't paying attention, or didn't want to believe it. Kind of like climate change.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 07 2018, @05:45PM
ding
it started when they introduced a login box to their search page. after that, it was providing free email for the purposes of mining the mailboxes.
there was an uproar in the tech sector that spam filtering did more harm than good, but people like my girlfriend's mom didn't care, because they ran out of comcast addresses on their account and gmail was free. everyone knew hotmail was for losers, and you had to be *invited* into gmail--and she was!
besides, as a good catholic, she claimed to have nothing to hide and she didnt really believe someone would just read her email. how boring.
and that's how i expect most people see it.. not a big machine selling you out after figuring you out, but it's the same little man that turns on the refrigerator door light. he wouldnt read your emails in much the same way he doesn't judge what food is in the fridge.