
Google’s Secret China Project “Effectively Ended” After Internal Confrontation - uptown
https://theintercept.com/2018/12/17/google-china-censored-search-engine-2/
======
burtonator
True story...

I run a web crawling company named Datastreamer where we license data to
social media monitoring firms.

We're very white hat... Don't even like to mess around with grey hat areas as
we don't want something like the Cambridge Analytica situation coming back to
bite us in the ass.

About 1.5 years ago we were contacted by a 3rd party firm which we eventually
found out was a cut out for Saudi Arabia.

The deal was at least $350k per year but we never got down to final
negotiation. They wanted a LOT of data and also custom support and
engineering. It could have easily hit $1M which is a lot of money and would
have been a significant percentage of our revenue.

About a month into conversations the questions became a bit disturbing. It was
clear to me that they were interested in tracking ethic minorities and trying
to track down their physical location.

... you can read between the lines in the RFP.

After finding out what happened to Khashoggi I'm VERY happy about my decision.

They were using this technology to harass him on social media and I'm sure are
and were tracking other people.

~~~
redisman
Too bad there are so many people like Manafort who are happy to take on that
job for a quick buck. Sure people are being hunted down but check out the
ostrich jacket!

~~~
jeron
for every company that refuses, there'll be one that will take it on for the
right price...

~~~
praptak
This is both true and a shitty excuse.

------
freewizard
AFAICT the way Dragonfly utilizing search log to probe Great Fire Wall
blacklist and skip them in results was the same way how google.cn (localized
Google search in china) worked.

That was a smart but arguable approach, Google was heavily criticized to
present those "passively censored" results. However, no one from Google at
that time did a #walkout or resign for that. Also notably Google did not quit
China for the criticism it received, but for a later government sponsored hack
targeting its code and service known as Operation Aurora.

So to compare 8~10 years ago and now, it seems GOOG leadership hasn't change
much on what they think they can do (aka "moral compass"); Google employee did
become more active on these issues which I think is progressive.

~~~
jeremysalwen
At least according to Sergey at the time, the key issue was "opposing
censorship and speaking out for the freedom of political dissent".

> Brin: I don't think it's a question of taking on China. In fact, I am a
> great admirer of both China and the Chinese government for the progress they
> have made. It is really opposing censorship and speaking out for the freedom
> of political dissent, and that's the key issue from our side.

>SPIEGEL: Four years ago, you allowed your service to be censored. Why have
you changed your mind now?

>Brin: The hacking attacks were the straw that broke the camel's back. There
were several aspects there: the attack directly on Google, which we believe
was an attempt to gain access to Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights
activists. But there is also a broader pattern we then discovered of simply
the surveillance of human rights activists.

[http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/google-co-
found...](http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/google-co-founder-on-
pulling-out-of-china-it-was-a-real-step-backward-a-686269.html)

~~~
adrianmonk
I always thought there were two ways to interpret that, and I was never sure
which one was correct.

One is that the hack made Google realize it was not a good, stable place to do
business, and the other reasons were just a good PR side effect. The other is
that the hack gave Google occasion to reevaluate, and they realized being
involved in that kind of censorship didn't sit right with them.

I suppose it could also be some of both.

~~~
londons_explore
There were other, bigger, non-public reasons.

~~~
dyarosla
Care to elaborate?

~~~
londons_explore
You'll probably have to wait for Larry or Sergey to write their memoirs...

------
Despegar
Great reporting by Gallagher. He should win a Pulitzer for his reporting on
Dragonfly.

The fact that Pichai refused to say they wouldn't re-enter China shows this is
probably just a pause until things die down.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Indeed, every part of this story really happened because of Ryan's coverage.
His reveal is what brought it to the attention of other Google employees,
members of Congress, and human rights groups. And eventually, it appears key
information he released is what also led to it's effective closure.

It's a true testament to the power of quality investigative journalism.

~~~
dmitrygr

      > His reveal is what brought it to
      > the attention of other Google
      > employees
    

Sad truth. And yet, <<we're a "very open" company that "encourages internal
debate">>

~~~
sfilargi
Don't consume the corporate cool-aid. Google, and for that matter any other
company, is not its employees, it is its stockholders.

~~~
rjf72
I would agree with you in general but this is probably not the best example of
it. Sergey Brin and Larry Page own a majority of the voting shares at Google.
So even though it's technically a public company, it's still for all intents
and purposes their company. It's the same story with Zuckerberg and Facebook
which is why things like 'shareholders calling for Zuckerberg to be replaced'
don't really mean anything _directly_. If every single shareholder except
Zuckerberg voted to replace him, he stays. Consequently the actions and
behaviors of these companies strongly reflect the views and desires of these
individuals.

------
iaw
> Scott Beaumont, Google’s leader in China and a key architect of the
> Dragonfly project, “did not feel that the security, privacy, and legal teams
> should be able to question his product decisions,”

If I was more eloquent I'd draw some analogy between Scott Beaumont's behavior
and China...

~~~
Nasrudith
Well it is clearly an authoritarian personality - don't question his decisions
and just obey. Sucks to work under but isn't usually quite as bad as an
authoritarian government _. And really that sort of thing should be a reason
to be fired instantly from a tech company - not because of employee morale,
expecting people you pay to think not to think being bad management, ethics,
or anything like that but just because that it is a massive security
liability. If your boss really is the sort to demand to send over all employee
records over email or else you are fired that makes everyone far more phishing
vulnerable.

_ Of course if it is 'disregard safety procedures both can kill you just the
same'.

~~~
debt
Idk probably knew they weren’t breaking any laws and also wanted to hit an
aggressive deadline.

That is if any of his engineers had qualms about what they were doing they’d
be checked at the door because again it’s all legal according to the law and
they had to hit a deadline.

Especially because there’s nothing here that’s technically exceptional other
than it runs counter to what we Americans considered ethical.

Glad the PR fallout tipped whatever cost-benefit analysis they did by severely
damaging the Google brand. Crazy they didn’t consider it up front.

The fallout feels similar to them the release of the Boston Dynamics video.
They don’t want to be associated with “job automating” robots.

~~~
Nasrudith
I think the issue is less PR but more labor dispute essentially - the high end
having greviances is rarer but it does happen. They can weather being just
another evil corporation reputationally - they can't weather mass defections
of expensive talent that may decide to go to competitors or go Traitorous
Eight on them.

They have a pattern there of being forced to bend since at least the "memo-
gate" and although they don't like it the math is clear enough to them. If
employees are making money net it is rational to replace them if the
alternative could make more money. Willful employees are an annoyance with a
relative liability to corporate but their productivity gives them cold
rational sway that says "just add it to the employee expenses section if you
know what is good for you".

It isn't ideal for everyone - indeed it works because they are outliers. If
everyone can do flawless brain surgery it no longer demands a premium no
matter how difficult it is. It is in some ways more powerful than traditional
labor - they organize because they need the company. Companies can decide to
leave and out source to cheaper locales in response. Powerful labor has few
equivalent alternatives. I say powerful and not scarce because mere obscurity
can be subsituited for - powerful less so. If they could have already they
would have. The companies need the high end and they know it. Just look at
Hollywood movie budgets to the stars - they can ask for such outrageous sums
because the alternative is worse in the current climate.

Of course there is a caveat - if they ever become obsolete they will be
dropped quickly due to their leveraging. Things can be very fickle especially
with advances that can metaphorically turn weaving from an apprentice-
journeyman-master trade to a factory job worked by illiterate women and
children.

------
fatjokes
"Traditional" companies like Amazon, Apple and Oracle heavily punish employees
for banding together, freely communicating and protesting like this, so they
would never have the opportunity to protest controversial projects like this.
I fear the main lesson corporate leaders will take from this is to lockdown on
employee freedom.

~~~
706f6f70
I think the main lesson from Google was make sure the mainstream media agrees
with your point prior to protesting it. If the media does not agree, they will
ask for your head(s) and threaten to boycott your employer until it is
delivered on a silver platter.

The number of people protesting is inconsequential as platters can be built to
accommodate a near infinite number of heads.

------
Lazare
It's interesting, because if The Intercept is to be believed, Beaumont has
basically gone rogue, carving out his own little empire, aggressively
preventing other internal teams from figuring out what he's doing, and
engaging in behaviour that violates internal Google rules and policies, as
well as which opening Google to significant reputational risk.

I mean, I'll be the first to admit I have made mistakes in my career, but I
can't recall ever making a mistake that got my boss called in to testify
before Congress, or that got my company prptested by Amnesty International, or
that got hundreds of my colleagues to sign a letter of protest! Managing to do
all of those at once is...well, honestly it's sort of impressive, but is
raises questions.

If The Intercept is just completely wrong, I'd expect to see a categorical
denial; after all it would make Google look a lot better if they can
convincingly demonstrate that all of this didn't actually happen. If The
Intercept is _right_ , I'd expect to see Beaumont fired; that's what happens
when people violate internal rules and cause significant damage to their
employer as a result.

Since we've seen neither...I guess the logical assumption is that The
Intercept was right about what Beaumont was doing, but he...wasn't rogue? That
official Google policy was to subvert official Google policy, and hide things
from the internal teams charged with stopping that exact thing? Like...is the
CEO _really_ having meetings with the privacy team and telling them to be
extra vigilant not to let product teams misuse personal data, and then later
that afternoon meeting with Beaumont and telling him to be extra careful not
to let the privacy team find out that he's misusing personal data to develop a
product?

What a bizarre situation.

~~~
sonnyblarney
Working off the main campus, on a very sensitive project that the CEO himself
likely shielded from other internal parties ... is not that bizarre really. I
don't see how he's 'gone rogue' either, rather, this is more like a c-level
sanctioned kind of skunkworks.

~~~
pimmen
In a world where the share holder care that should trigger an investigation. I
don't want to own shares in a company where management randomly does shitty
things completely against the guidelines they've codified.

But, we live in a world where I guess the share holders nod their heads at
inappropriate times when growth is on the line.

------
srkmno
Never really understood why Google running a search engine in China is
controversial, it wouldn't be the first US company doing business there, nor
the first to censor due to local laws (Apple censors their app store etc) and
it's not like tiananmen square queries will be the bulk of their traffic.

~~~
int_19h
According to the rumors, Dragonfly goes far beyond censorship, in that it has
provisions to identify specific people from search queries. So it's not just
that searching for "Tiananmen Square" wouldn't give any useful results, but
it'd also let the Big Brother know who was inappropriately curious.

Combine this with their upcoming social credit system, and you can easily see
how this is proactively helping build an authoritarian panopticon dystopia.

~~~
srkmno
It's what all companies there are required to do and the Chinese people accept
it, and a lot of them welcome the social credit system (according to reporting
on the program) it's arrogant to to presume we know what's best for them.

~~~
Zhenya
" it's arrogant to to presume we know what's best for them."

Would you say the same for the victims of the khemr rouge, millions killed by
Stalin?

Maybe the yellow stars helped the Jewish people gather for the Sabbath? /S

Basic human rights are not relative.

~~~
Zhenya
Downvotes!!!! China-apologist brigade in full effect.

Why not tell me how you disagree?

------
sunstone
It seems Google has now strayed far from the "don't be evil" path. First came
the illegal agreement not to hire from other tech companies, then the "say
nothing to no one" employment agreement all employees have to sign and now
this product the help Mr. Xi put the jack boot to every neck in China. I've
probably missed a few, please fill in the blanks if you can.

To a large extent Google's business, like Enron's before it, depends largely
on the trust of its users. Once it begins to wobble, head for the hills.

~~~
ganzuul
Less colored than your take, but; Each time they cancel a beta, a vast amount
of engineering work gets laid to waste. These engineers could be making the
world a better place in other industries.

~~~
icebraining
Other industries cancel products too. Something like 80% of all drugs that
start being test never make it to market, for example. Other industries will
have multiple draft proposals being drawn up, often at great cost, only to
dismiss all except one.

~~~
ganzuul
I know, I just don't think it being common makes it right.

There are also untold numbers of fascinating patents which never see
commercial success, duplication of effort, and arguing about who gets the
biggest slice of a cake that doesn't exist yet.

It's ineffective, and therefore I don't like it.

------
randaouser
I started working on fuzzy matching searchable encryption for this very
reason; you can send an encrypted search term and match using jaccard
similarity to an encrypted index of similar documents without information
leakage of the search query or the encrypted document.

This is the state of the art at the moment and would be useful for such things
as: 1)Private search over encrypted documents 2)getting your FICO score like
equifax without leaking any information 3)finding genetic treatments for
conditions you are predisposed to without revealing your private genetic
makeup or a pharmaceutical companies patented gene therapy sequence

Typically retrieval of the document would require a TOR like network.

Ill post a link to my work in the near future. Msg me if you're interested.

~~~
raincom
is it related to homomorphic encryption?

~~~
randaouser
I imagine a decentralized search service for a particular set of search
queries that users want privacy against.

it leverages Additive and Multiplicative Homomorphic Encryption with Elliptic
Curves. I wanted a fuzzy searching algorithm so went with a minhash
implementation on document bigram vectors which were then converted to a
locality sensitive hash.

Unfortunately, it is an interactive protocol unlike something like
zksnark/starks :(

I have written it in Javascript and plan to deploy it as a plugin in Brave
Browser. Sundar really disappointed me recently with his rhetoric; he claims
googles pursuit for information accessibility but also want to censor and
allow authoritarian governments to profile users.

This would also allow location services without revealing your location

------
yadongwen
This is a great loss to Chinese people who have to use worse products such as
Baidu and so.com. I was hoping Google's re-entering could result in a better
Internet (or Intranet) ecosystem in China but alas...

~~~
QML
Since you are one of the few people who support a re-entry of Google into
China, can I ask a question? There is no doubt that a cultural gap exists
between Chinese and Americans, and their perceptions of the current Chinese
government. Should a foreign company like Google adopt the culture of the
country they're entering, or maintain the culture of where they're
headquartered?

From what I've read, the main opposition is only coming from Americans...
oddly enough.

~~~
sonnyblarney
This is an unfair argument because it's not a matter of 'culture' it's a
broader set of ethical issues at stake.

The Chinese are putting people into concentration camps on the basis of their
ethnicity or religion, many are dying and their organs are being harvested.

If the Western press weren't so hypocritically afraid of speaking out - this
would be a huge global story, it's a really big deal. This is getting into
holocaust territory in 2018 for gosh sakes.

And it's definitely more than Americans speaking out.

~~~
manfredo
I think pointing to different culture and history is a valid point of
discussion. The point of view of a lot of the mainland Chinese people I've
spoken to is that the post-Mao CCP has done a lot of bad, but also an immense
amount of good for China as a whole. Compare the modern CCP with all of
China's past governments of the last two centuries, and it's unambiguously
better than Mao, the warlords, or the late Quing dynasty. Sure, maybe China
would have been better off if the KMT won the civil war, but we can't change
history.

The history of what did happen is that after Mao the country went from
struggling to feed most of it's people to what is likely the 2nd most powerful
country on Earth. It went from GDP per capitalism of $1,000 in 1970 to $8,000
in 2010. China singlehandedly halved global poverty in doing so. While some of
it's actions are appalling to foreigners, they are tolerated for historical
reasons. E.g. distrust of organized religion stems from repeated religious
rebellions that killed tens of millions of people, so many Chinese see the
suppression of religion as a necessary measure to ensure social order. In that
sense many Chinese have the same underlying ethical framework (don't
needlessly cause harm, try to better the lives of everyday people, etc.), but
the lessons history taught the country means that they pursue these ideals in
a different way, and opt to make different tradeoffs when balancing different
needs. While I am indeed apalled by some of the CCP's actions, I can empathize
to a degree as to why Chinese people would still have a positive view of it
overall.

Of course, this is coming from a Westerner summarizing my interactions so it
obviously risks putting words in other people's mouths.

~~~
sonnyblarney
I don't doubt that there are cultural differences, and that 'good has been
done' in the past, surely there is a cultural context.

And FYI - any otherwise civilized place that was held back by totalitarian
communists, or ruined by war was able to 'bounce back'.

All of Europe was in ruin in 1945 - they also grew by 'leaps and bounds' after
that time. China just had to wait for Mao to die.

More poignantly - none of this can dismiss much of the abuse - it cannot be
written of as 'cultural difference'.

~~~
manfredo
I think you're missing the point. Ask the question "What is the most effective
way of curbing sectarian violence?". Both Chinese and Westerners agree that
sectarian violence is bad - that's the same underlying ethical value. But the
answer to that question will probably differ. At least in the US we try to
curb sectarian violence by promoting tolerance and integration. Historically
that had worked pretty well for us, we haven't seen much sectarian violence
outside of small scale acts of terror and regional conflict (e.g. fights with
early Mormon settlers). China, on the other hand, has lost 30 million people
due to a religious rebellion in the 19th century. A staggering figure,
exceeding even China's WWII casualties. Furthermore, the Holocaust did not
occur in Asia (at least the overwhelming majority of it occurred in Europe) so
concentration and surveillance of religious minorities does not strike the
same nerve.

With that history, I think a person can genuinely, earnestly believe that the
CCP's policy towards Uhigyrs or Falun Gong is limiting human suffering in the
grand scheme of things. This is what I mean when I say that it's possible to
have the same underlying values, but people from different societies can come
up with drastically different or even conflicting implementations.

This is moral relativism to a degree. But empathy is an exercise in
relativism. I don't like what China is doing to it's religious minorities, and
I don't want this post to come off as trying to justify it. But if we do want
to convince the country to change it's ways I think it's important to see why
the country is doing what it is, and not pick an easy conclusion like saying
China or the CCP is immoral.

~~~
sonnyblarney
No, I'm definitely not missing your point, I'm disagreeing, fyi and your
comment is shocking and repulsive.

You are justifying, on cultural grounds, the mass incarceration of a minority
because 'they could pose a potential social problem, even though they are not
presently' which is abhorrent.

Yes a 'cultural context' of Han ethnocentric racism and open bigotry, perhaps,
but of course this isn't really justifying anything.

There is no rationalization for arbitrarily incarcerating massive parts of the
population, it basically doesn't make any sense at all.

Especially considering the none of the Falun Gong, Tibetans, Uighurs represent
any threat to China's peace in the first place.

Every place on Earth has had some degree of calamity or violence in the past,
and China has definitely had it's share of mass murder (giving and receiving),
there's no shortage of this in their own history books, if anything they
should be even more enlightened about it all.

There are no cultural arguments that can be made here, the situation,
particularly because of the deaths and subsequent organ harvesting, is
approaching 'holocaust' terms.

~~~
manfredo
The point is, it's not because

> they could pose a potential social problem, even though they are not
> presently

It's because

> This region is exhibiting separatism over religious lines, and our country
> has an established pattern of religous separatist movements turning into
> catastrophic wars that claim tens of millions of lives.

In short, while Westerners might see mass incarceration of religous minorities
and think, "holy cow, if we don't do something this will be another Holocaust"
Chinese might look at Uhigyr separatism and think, "holy cow, if we don't do
something this will be another Taiping rebellion". The former occurred more
recently, but the latter was several times larger in magnitude. I'm not
Chinese myself so I can't speak to the magnitude of the Taiping rebellion in
their social memory. But the point is I can at least _empathize_ with their
point of view even if I find it's results abhorrent.

And as I have stated repeatedly, do not mistake justifications of Chinese
opinions as justifying the actions themselves, and I have repeatedly stated
that Chinese treatment of Uhigyrs appalls me. The fact that you accuse me of
justifying their actions in spite of explicitly stating otherwise is
indicating that you aren't reading my comments with the degree of attention
that is necessary to have a productive conversation on a controversial topic
like this.

~~~
jjcc
Your understanding of this issue is much better than many HNers on the reason
why the "concentration camp" exist. Most HNers get all information from West
Media with many convincing "evidence" with map and photo analysis. That's why
you "appall".

However, there are other sources of information selectively filtered by media.
For example,here's a story of a famous Uhigyr celebrity went back to her alma
mater (in Chinese):

[https://www.backchina.com/news/2018/11/20/594759.html](https://www.backchina.com/news/2018/11/20/594759.html)

The Uhigyr celebirties are disproportional more than Han based on their
poplulation. But they seems to work/live like nothing happen although the
whole world are angry. There are 2 possible reason:s

1\. They(all of them) don't care about their compatriot

2\. They know the "camps" but they also know the real nature of the "camps".

Most Chinese know these celebrities very well through entertainment news. One
even show up on TV almost everyday. If you were a Chinese , which reason would
you bet?

~~~
manfredo
You're omitting the most plausible explanation:

3\. They are disgusted by the camps, but they know if they speak out they'll
end up inside one.

China keeps a tight leash on its celebrities. The government is willing to
make even internationally famous ones like Fan Bing Bing disappear for months
without explanation. It probably wouldn't take much to make one of the Uhigyr
celebrities you mention disappear permanently.

What I said to the other commenter also applies here: don't confuse my empathy
with why these camps exist with approval.

~~~
xfs
Empathy is unnecessary in this case. I would frame it as entertaining a
thought without accepting it, as in Aristotle's educated mind.

Moralizing is an easy to way to stop thinking and settle in a comfortable
narrative, a cop-out so one can avoid questioning their own ideological
identities. The thirst for a comfortable narrative is so strong today few can
resist it, which almost looks like we live in an era when we can no longer
afford entertaining different thoughts.

------
burtonator
These ethical dilemmas are really confusing for me.

One one had I don't want to be part of this type of behavior but it's just
going to give China the opportunity to fund a Google competitor to do it for
them...

I think it's lose/lose for Google.

~~~
abc-xyz
It really shouldn't be a dilemma unless you're morally bankrupt. Would you
sell a gun to a Neo-Nazi that you knew intended to use it to murder innocent
people? After all if you refused (and continued to do nothing to stop him)
then he would just buy from your competitor.

~~~
sir_bearington
The fact that you compare China with fascism is it's own can of worms, but
even your comparison with selling armaments falls short. China already has
search engines, Google wants to sell them a better one. Sure, it'll be
censored but there's nothing to indicate Google China would be any more or
less censored than Baidu. How does a China with Google become any more
dangerous than a China without Google? I suppose better search engines make
the country's labor force slightly more productive, which in turn means more
tax revenue, some of which may be spent on the military. But if you really
subscribe to such a belief, you should boycott all Chinese goods - and I'm
going to go out on a limb and doubt you're going to do that.

~~~
abc-xyz
Fine, the Neo-Nazi already has a pistol but you want to sell him an AK-47.
Sure, it'll be used to murder innocent people, but there's nothing to indicate
he would have kill more with your gun than the gun he already has.

Google is technologically superior to Baidu, and well, basically every company
in the world. Less people using VPN = more people exposed. Superior tech = can
imprison/murder more innocent people. More companies and governments
supporting China with tech + billions = they'll become evermore powerful and
continue to do great evil. Google becoming financially dependent on China will
give their government more leverage to force Google to share data and add
backdoors to their other applications, and they'd be more likely to help build
other tools that will help their government build a dystopian surveillance
state.

Do I boycutt all Chinese goods? No, but I do avoid everything "Made in China"
whenever it's possible (e.g. clothing, DSLR camera, etc.), and I try to
discourage other people and companies from doing business with China, as well
as protect their online privacy.

------
known
Blocked in China:

    
    
       - Google search 
       - Facebook 
       - YouTube 
       - Wikipedia (Chinese) 
       - Twitter 
       - Netflix 
       - Instagram 
       - Tumblr 
       - WhatsApp 
       - BBC 
       - New York Times 
       - Bloomberg 
       - Reuters 
       - WSJ 
       - TIME 
       - The Economist 
    

Not blocked:

    
    
       - Amazon 
       - Ebay 
       - Yahoo 
       - LinkedIn 
       - Bing 
       - Apple 
       - MSN
    

[https://twitter.com/spectatorindex/status/102051772640034406...](https://twitter.com/spectatorindex/status/1020517726400344064)

------
vlmlee
Do we really want a proliferation of next-gen monitoring and surveillance
software? Isn't this what we were warned about?

~~~
kmlx
this ship passed about 30 years ago.

------
yogenpro
Weird. I've been primarily using Internet in China, and I have never heard of
265.com before. I believe that's also the case for most Chinese Internet
users. I doubt how valuable the data collected from that site would be.

------
pdm55
I don't understand. I used Microsft's Bing when I was living in China. It was
very obviously censored. Just type in a "rude" word and you get a message that
the search results were blocked. Part of the fun was seeing what risque slang
wasn't recognised and, therefore, blocked.

So what compromises are Microsoft prepared to make, but Google isn't?

------
honkycat
This was so dumb, such bad optics for Google, who up until this came out I was
mostly ambivalent about.

Might have even considered working for them.

------
ineedasername
Title seems wrong, it sounds like Dragonfly is still undergoing active
development, just with reduced data access (no more access to 265.com search
data) but the article references ongoing development, even though some
developers were removed. That doesn't sound like it's actually ended. And the
title's quote of "Effectively Ended" seems only to be quoting itself, there's
no one in the article the said those words.

Pichai's words to congress could easily be read to mean "we don't have a
release date at this time" not that it wasn't still an active project.

~~~
erikb
The political battle against Pichai made a success. So now the public support
can be tuned down and Google can move on to do the only thing they could do in
their current situation: building tools for the chinese gov to enter the
market. They'll probably do the same thing behind closed doors and without the
public Google label on the final result. Maybe baidu will suddenly provide
better search results or something.

That's how this world works, and it's not like they really have a choice in
that matter.

~~~
ineedasername
I think Google does have choice, they could forego revenue when it's knowingly
generated by efforts to censor and oppress people. "how this world works"
absolutely includes people & companies that betray their ideals for money, but
there are those that stick to their principals too [0],[1]

[0] [https://moxie.org/blog/saudi-surveillance/](https://moxie.org/blog/saudi-
surveillance/)

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18292327](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18292327)

------
strooper
On another note, 265.com, a Google subsidiary in China, has no SSL certificate
set for the domain, making the site access effectively http only.

------
natch
My guess is they will just switch to doing a pilot project in another country,
just as repressive, but somewhere where the abuse of power is relatively
speaking more under the radar for most people than China. Myanmar, for
example, or Vietnam. This way they can achieve the research goals of learning
how to operate in such an environment, while pretending to have stopped.

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
Or the US?

~~~
natch
Sadly yes.

------
est
Dragonfly is the only project that carries empirical study of exactly which
keyword triggers the GFW, at a large scale.

This could be useful in business like suggest what kind of Ad content are
"safe" for the Chinese market, automatically.

Also one can harvest blocklist, there can be some very interesting new
discoveries, useful intels can be made into updates and alerts.

Google can not disclosure this strategy publicly because the Chinese might
masquerade the firewall's behavior accordingly.

Traveling into darkness can be used to fight against darkness. I feel sorry
for the engineers.

------
jiveturkey
this isn’t over, not by a long shot.

if this company is still being pulled along (i hesitate to say _led_ ) by the
CFO, and i believe it is, then this will have lasting repercussions.

the spark of revolution has been quelled and the peasants have been appeased.
but their hand has been shown and they have but one card to play. ok sorry for
the poor job at evocative rhetoric.

basically, from this point and for the next 5 years the culture will be
changed by subtle, barely perceptible nudges. at the end, the engineers will
be left without any real voice and any uprising will by met with backlash from
their peers, not their betters.

then, google will be able to explore china and similar markets.

or perhaps, much like many tech companies license their IP from an IE
subsidiary, the core tech will be licensed to a subsidiary that isn’t
constrained by western morals.

------
shaki-dora
Now where are the people claiming nothing but quitting, and not even that,
would ever change a company's decision? Or how not investing in China will get
Google managers thrown into a dark Delaware jail for wasting an opportunity to
maximise shareholder value?

~~~
saalweachter
Flame wars are no place for straw men.

------
then
(internal) firewall duh [http://www.thegoldwater.com/news/43624-Fire-Rages-at-
Google-...](http://www.thegoldwater.com/news/43624-Fire-Rages-at-Google-
Offices-in-Beijing)

------
aaomidi
So many people here only look at the business cost of what Google wanted to do
and don't care about the human cost.

It's great that you were born in a western country with a good understanding
of freedom and your rights. The majority of the world don't have these
conditions. Your "business" decision effects billions of people in the world.

I was born and mostly raised in Iran. "Business" decisions from companies that
sold the government DPI equipment made sense for them, their shareholders, and
their investors. But at what cost? Iran is a very young country in terms of
population age. Many Iranians simply didn't have the opportunity to grow
simply because a few companies wanted more $$$ in their pockets.

If you in any way support these decisions while having complete freedom not
to, then you're complicit. You're part of the reason so many countries have a
lost/dark generation. You're part of the cause of so much suffering in the
world.

Good on you Google Engineers who stood against making a few $ of profit to
stop the suffering of many, many people.

~~~
badrabbit
I get what you're saying but a country is sovreign from othets and
corporations don't get to decide what's acceptable in a country.

It comes down to this imo: will the product be used in ways that are morally
wrong? Or will it be used in ways which are legally wrong or socially
unacceptable?

I agree with you that a company should not sell their products to enable a
moral wrong in any country.

However, free speech and oppression of democracy is not a moral wrong. "Free
speech" in the west means the Government shouldn't censor speech,this is a
relativly new concept almost unheard of in history. It certainly isn't a human
right. If a legitimate government of a country censors speech they're merely
excercising their authority unless their laws restrict them from doing so as
in the west. Whatever your view may be, a corporation does not get to decide
social norms and what should be legal in any country.

~~~
guelo
> It certainly isn't a human right.

Freedom of expression is in Article 19 of the UN's Universal Declaration of
Human Rights. [http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-
rights/](http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/)

~~~
purple_ducks
Not debating whether or not it is a right but the UN isn't the world's moral
authority.

I view them as an un-elected advisory group.

~~~
pimmen
No, but China does recognize it as a human right since it has ratified the
declaration and they enjoy permanent membership on the Security Council (after
having gotten that position from Taiwan, and they did it under the condition
that they would uphold their decisions).

I posit that breaking the very morals you believe in yourself, and lying about
it, is immoral.

------
alekhkhanna
Read "Google's Secret Santa Project".

------
romeisendcoming
Google: selectively good for goodness sake.

------
izacus
Great! So will Apple employees walk out next in protest of Apple assisting
Chinese government by giving them iMessage and iCloud data?

Source: [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-apple-icloud-
insigh...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-apple-icloud-
insight/apple-moves-to-store-icloud-keys-in-china-raising-human-rights-fears-
idUSKCN1G8060)

~~~
tomatotomato37
Apple has a very significant manufactoring presence in China, so unfortunately
they can't cleanly separate from China like Google can without risking
retaliation

~~~
reaperducer
_Apple has a very significant manufactoring presence in China, so
unfortunately they can 't cleanly separate from China like Google can without
risking retaliation_

Apple can walk away from China whenever it wants to. Apple is the one company
in the entire world best equipped with the cash to make this kind of public
stand. But it doesn't want to because doing so will cost a lot of that money.

The only thing stopping Apple from closing its Chinese stores, and moving
manufacturing to another country is fear of the faceless shareholder bots that
have no AI for morality, and will punish Apple for doing the right thing.

Every time I see Tim Cook on stage patting himself on the back for making some
minor environmental improvement because it's the right thing to do, I can't
help but think it's all a farce because incremental environmental improvements
aren't even low-hanging fruit. They're the fruit that has already fallen from
the tree and rolled through his front door into his kitchen.

If Mr. Cook and the rest of his company want to impress, then do something
hard.

Disclosure: Apple shareholder, with morality, but not enough shares for Apple
to care.

~~~
CharlesW
> _Apple can walk away from China whenever it wants to._

Not unless they've spent the last decade building a secret duplicate supply
chain ecosystem.

~~~
munk-a
It would take money and time but it's something they're very able to do. And,
yes, they couldn't make this decision and instantly pivot, there are real
physical things that would need to be built before they could.

~~~
Apocryphon
If they can already spend all this effort into making alternate chipsets...

------
alextooter
Too bad for me. I want use Google search in China,even it is not prefect.

------
matz1
This is sucks, well, I hope they can start it again in the future.

------
baybal2
> Google has used 265.com as a honeypot for market research, storing
> information about Chinese users’ searches before sending them along to
> Baidu.

I can't resist to post a meme here

[https://www.news.com.au/technology/online/censorship/chinas-...](https://www.news.com.au/technology/online/censorship/chinas-
war-on-words-anything-be-it-a-phrase-or-picture-that-can-be-used-to-insult-xi-
has-been-banned/news-story/a8e5a9d558b3ed0465e1fc020e2d6c2c)

------
onetimemanytime
China is a world on its own. Google sees the writing on the wall, enter China
or become FB (talk about a has-been.) Google, FB etc need 20% quarter to
quarter growth and Google has pretty much saturated the western world. So it
is China...kiss the ring and all. Google is not going to lose market cap
because of so called values. They're so 2005

~~~
bobthepanda
Who _needs_ 20% YoY growth? Plenty of big companies get big enough and don't
keel over, and Google is already very profitable.

~~~
onetimemanytime
_Who needs 20% YoY growth?_

Google does. If not 20%, around that number....

Trailing P/E 38.67

Forward P/E 1 21.87

[https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/GOOGL/key-
statistics?p=GOOGL](https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/GOOGL/key-
statistics?p=GOOGL)

~~~
sigstoat
how do you turn a P/E of 21 into needing somewhere between 20% annual growth
(your current claim?) and 200% annual growth (your original claim? 20% quarter
over quarter.)

