
Google Plans to Launch Censored Search Engine in China, Leaked Documents Reveal - crispinb
https://theintercept.com/2018/08/01/google-china-search-engine-censorship/
======
bad_user
There might be many tech companies in China, no doubt, including big names,
and companies should comply with local regulations if they want to do
business, however the fact that Google pulled their search engine out of
China, defying their censorship attempts, is one big reason for why I
respected Google, in spite of my reservations for them.

So let me tell you what I think as an EU citizen that's actively concerned
about both freedom of speech and privacy ...

I couldn't give a crap about what companies are active in China and complying
with their local regulations. That Google took a stand showed they valued
freedom of speech above their bottom line, but now if they are going back in,
we can talk about the primary concern with Google ...

Google is the destroyer of privacy. Google tracks their users at an
unprecedented level in the whole history of humanity and if they do this, we
now have concrete proof that they don't have values that are above their
bottom line.

Therefore we have a problem and the next time the EU slaps them with another
multi-billion fine for violating EU's anti-trust or privacy laws, I'll cheer
them for it, because it's all about _the dough_.

~~~
mahranch
> pulled their search engine out of China, defying their censorship attempts

They didn't pull their search engine out of China because of censorship
requests, they pulled their search engine because the government kept trying
to hack them and steal their source code, which they eventually did. So Google
up and left.

Source:
[https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303493904575167...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303493904575167290011111402)

They like to cite censorship and free speech to look better, but they knew
_exactly_ what they were getting into before setting foot in China -- the
government of China made specific requirements before they could do business
in China and Google agreed to those requirements. In fact, Google was
criticized heavily for doing so. So don't buy into their history revisionism,
they were on board with censorship from day 1. They had to be, or the PRC
wouldn't allow them in.

~~~
joshuamorton
Fwiw I think you're being mildly too revisionist in the other direction. The
major issue with the hacking wasn't stealing source code, but attempts to
access user data. Certainly accessing source code is bad, but imo in general
Google protects user data much moreso than source code.

(I work at Google)

~~~
DINKDINK
>in general Google protects user data

How is storing and cataloging reams of private data 'protecting' it? If your
significant other was constantly noting every friend you talked to, every
purchase you made, videotaping your every move, would you call that protecting
them?

To protect a user's data, it shouldn't even be collected in the first place. I
think a better choice of words is that Google does a better job at
_monopolizing_ user data.

~~~
bad_user
People mistake _privacy_ for _security_.

Google has one of the most secure services on the Internet. At the same time
Google is the biggest threat to privacy.

These two statements are not mutually exclusive. People simply don't get what
_privacy_ is about.

~~~
thatcat
Security is complicated. I think the point was that if you don't store the
unnecessary data then that data is 100% secure.

~~~
joshuamorton
Sure, but the corollary to that is that security is complicated. Do you really
expect the average user to have a more secure system than what they would
otherwise have. In other words, is a Gmail account more or less secure than
what you would have otherwise.

I think the answer depends, but it certainly isn't always "less". There's some
information that you have to store somewhere, and is having a world class
security team who works to actively mitigate things like phishing better than
storing it yourself?

~~~
thatcat
I'm just saying not saving data is simpler than saving data and avoids the
complication. The average user doesn't need 99% of the data that google saves
about them and would have no reason to store it themselves. You can have
phishing protection and the world class security team while also not saving
the unnecessary data resulting in an even more secure model. Protonmail seems
to be just as secure without requiring data collection, for example.

~~~
extralego
Right. If google were just black hats trying to help everyone with their data
security, then OK. But, since they aren't, the mere fact that they have the
personal data stored to begin with undermines it's security from the moment of
storing it.

I had my car stolen last year. If I had found a note left that informed me it
is in a secure place, I'm not sure I would have felt any better. And I'm not
sure I would appreciate someone expecting me to.

------
mywacaday
Why should there be a different standard for Google and other tech companies
to not expand into China. If we have a problem with how their government works
policy should be applied that prevents/manages how businesses subject to our
laws operate abroad.

The majority of people don't really care how corporations behave. If they did
Google search/gmail/maps would not be so popular. They have the right price
point(0$) for people to ignore any moral misgivings they may have. I'm guilty
of this and up to my neck in google services

~~~
macspoofing
>Why should there be a different standard for Google and other tech companies
to not expand into China.

This exactly.

I would even make a stronger case. It's not fair to expect a technology
company to fight a major world economic power. This is a failure of US and EU
governments. They should pressure China to liberalize their government and
provide a level economic playing field (it is insane what China gets away with
with respect to the roadblocks it places on Western companies to do business
there).

~~~
Alir3z4
Neither US or EU are the world police. They have no rights and should not have
any to pressure any country to push their own idea of how things should work
in another country, just like how China and others don't demand such and even
if they do that doesn't make it less wrong.

~~~
Mediterraneo10
> They have no rights and should not have any to pressure any country to push
> their own idea of how things should work in another country

To believe that China does not attempt to influence other countries is naive.
China puts a great deal of pressure on other nations with regard to things
like recognition of Taiwan or inviting the Dalai Lama to speak. These have
occasionally been in the news over the last few years, e.g. China’s
retaliatory measures against Norway for Liu Xiabo winning the Nobel Peace
Prize, but in fact they go back decades – when Michelangelo Antonioni was
showing his documentary film _Chung Kuo_ around in the early 1970s, in
European countries where a screening was organized the local Chinese embassy
would raise scandal.

~~~
neom
China certainly has a very strong view on the make-up of the region, much is
historical, some of it fair. However, we don't see them going around
converting everyone to communism. In fact, even all the investment they are
doing in Africa right now, very little of the social aspects of china are
being exported. Xi Jinping has always maintained: china is not for export.

~~~
Mediterraneo10
> In fact, even all the investment they are doing in Africa right now, very
> little of the social aspects of china are being exported.

China has repeatedly lobbied, with some success now, for East African nations
to adopt its "Great Firewall" network infrastructure.

------
quotemstr
The hypocrisy of western activist types on this issue is astounding. One week,
they demand that tech companies across the US censor what _they_ find
"harmful", but the next week, they condemn the Chinese for doing _exactly the
same thing_ for content they find "harmful".

Either you're in favor of free speech or you're just partial about which
content you want to censor. The activist crowd in the west lost all moral
standing on this subject years ago.

~~~
fauigerzigerk
I think there is an important distinction to be made.

Censorship that is meant to block all criticism of the current rulers to keep
them in power forever is unlike all other kinds of censorship because it is
self-referential and self-reinforcing.

If a government censors, say, sites that distribute pirated movies or sites
that glamorise suicide, I can still protest against that ban or campaign to
get a different government elected.

But if a government censors both those sites and my criticism of the ban, then
that is a wholly different kind of censorship.

Making that distinction is not hypocrisy.

~~~
ehsankia
Any censorship is almost be definition self-reinforcing. If you censor
something, there's less of it and the ideas that aren't censored proliferate
more, getting stronger.

~~~
fauigerzigerk
In that sense, censoring criticism of rulers in general is doubly self-
reinforcing.

It reinforces the specific laws and rules they make and it reinforces
obedience, lack of critical thinking and intransparency of the censorship
decisions themselves.

I don't see how anyone could deny that censoring political opposition in
general acts on a meta level and is therefore categorically different from all
other stuff that gets censored.

------
bkohlmann
I'm having a hard time understanding how Google employees will shut down
"immoral" project's for the US Dept of Defense programs like "Project Maven,"
yet hold their tongues in building an application that limits speech, aiding a
repressive regime.

~~~
nitwit005
You realize this is an article that exists because a Google employee leaked it
to the press right?

~~~
AndrewKemendo
The difference is significant however.

The Google/Maven project just barely got started and people were resigning in
protest.

The Google/China project has...

 _Teams of programmers and engineers creat[ing] a custom Android app,
different versions of which have been named “Maotai” and “Longfei.” The app
has already been demonstrated to the Chinese government; the finalized version
could be launched in the next six to nine months_

and nobody is resigning or internally protesting.

Not only that, Fei Fei Li set up an AI research shop in China for Google and
was one of the most outspoken advocates of keeping Maven quiet, yet is loud
about Google/China AI cooperation on literally exactly the same technology.

So Google, employees and management, have clearly chosen a side here, even if
it wasn't an intentional policy.

And just to be excruciatingly clear, the work that Google is doing in China
includes a heavy specific computer vision piece around object
detection/recognition/segmentation, which will be used with the Yilong UAV
systems (and others) as well as the Guangdong social experiments.

------
influx
Google employees practically rioted when they found out their employer was
trying to get a contract with the American Government, but will just cash
their RSUs when they help the Chinese government censor its citizens.

Sad.

~~~
cirenehc
The Chinese government is going to censor its citizens regardless though.

~~~
bsamuels
The US government will just give the AI contract to Raytheon/Northrop instead
of Google. What's your point?

~~~
ehsankia
The difference is that providing a censored service is better than no service.
Android for example is a much more limited experience in China. Do you
honestly not think a Chinese citizen would prefer having a limited Play Store
than none at all? Chinese people don't go around searching about Tiananmen
Square every day, and they would much rather have access to all the cat videos
on Youtube than none at all.

Whereas the Maven project, there wasn't really a user benefiting.

------
Eridrus
So what had fundamentally changed here? Is it just that China is a bigger
market now? Did Google think they actually had enough leverage to get the
Chinese to back down? Are the founders simply less idealistic than before?

~~~
emiliobumachar
Hypothesis: the rise of the right to be forgotten in Europe served as a
stepping stone. Free speech absolutists within the company could not be
defeated in one step, but could be defeated in two steps.

I am _not_ saying that right to be forgotten is halfway through from free-
speech absolutism to full-blown state control of information, but come on. If
you ever jumped from a high place, you know that every foot of height makes a
lot of difference.

~~~
ggggtez
Relating this to RTBF is interesting, but your thinking is muddled. Europe
created RTBF, not Google. So the hypothesis that RTBF is part of a Google
corporate plan to "defeat" internal activists is baseless. It just makes no
sense on the face of it.

~~~
emiliobumachar
What I meant was: EU created RTBF, Google went "well, we must comply with
local laws, and we can't get out of Europe". From there, it's a smaller leap
to comply with worse local laws.

------
gremlinsinc
There was another hn post a week or two ago, about how China is basically
taking over the world, and could leave the USA in it's dust.

Google, may be aware of this 'transition', which is a scary one, considering
the 'big brother' scheme they have in China, but if China becomes the king of
the world, Google and many other companies will have to play ball to stay
viable.

I'm reminded of a commercial where Americans are speaking Chinese, and there
are also I think Japanese commercials that show poverty and feature American
kids. Kind of disconcerting, and dystopian, but not out of the realm of
imagination.

~~~
pathseeker
China surpassing the US as an economic powerhouse doesn't imply poverty or the
inability to have viable companies there. What a silly dichotomy.

------
skc
Why should Apple be the only ones making money hand over fist from China (and
be lauded for their eye popping revenues every quarter)

~~~
hahahaha23
Making phones is different from helping censorship.

Although admittedly, their phone operation is also controversial by letting
works work extensively.

~~~
ehsankia
Yeah, why censor when you can collect all your users' data and give it
straight to the government.

[https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/17/apples-icloud-user-data-
in...](https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/17/apples-icloud-user-data-in-china-is-
now-handled-by-a-state-owned-mobile-operator/)

Do you honestly think that's less bad than blocking a few websites that are
already blocked and can be bypassed by VPN?

------
jillesvangurp
There are lots of tech companies active in countries like China, Russia, Iran,
and other countries with varying ideas about privacy, human rights, etc. This
generally requires complying with local legislation, whether you agree with
that or not.

Singling out Google for not opting to exclude a fifth of the population of
this planet from their products is a bit overkill. I'd rather they offer
choice to the Chinese people on their terms than opting to not be in China at
all. Google has huge stakes in China with Android, related production of many
Android devices, and a lot of their other products. I imagine pulling out of
China is not very practical for them at this point nor is selling phones
without Google search.

When I was still working on search Nokia Maps (now Here maps) we had to comply
with all sorts of rules internationally, including for China. In addition to
being weird about certain POIs (e.g. Tien an mien square) we also had to deal
with their obfuscated GPS coordinates. They use some weird shifting algorithm
that you have to license from them. The point is not the algorithm (you can
find it online if you dig hard enough) but the fact that you had to talk to
them to get a license. It's a control point for them.

Another weird thing was that Iran insisted on referring to the Gulf as the
Persian Gulf. One nice edge case there is the inflight maps of planes flying
over their territory.

The point here is that doing business internationally is hard and taking the
moral high ground basically means not doing business with a lot of countries.

~~~
the_grue
How precisely does the fact that these countries exist 'require' complying
with local legislation? Google is free to host their servers in other
countries, which are free from censorship laws. It's not like Google needs to
be present in that market to survive.

In a bigger context, the Internet business, and Google in particular, is a
product of a free, liberal society. It couldn't have existed without freedom.
Thus freedom is linked with success. So, as long as Google is innovative, it
has that inherent advantage over its Chinese competitors.

~~~
betterunix2
Are you sure the Internet is a product of a free and liberal society? It may
just be coincidence; America happened to be the largest economy on Earth when
the Internet was developed.

I would argue that the basic design of the Internet is the most efficient way
to build a large-scale, general-purpose computer network; this is why it has
subsumed or is in the process of subsuming every other system. Had China been
the world's largest economy at the time I think they would have developed the
Internet too -- maybe they would have tried to build some kind of censorship
in, but they would have quickly discovered that it is just more efficient to
censor at the edges (I think they are already aware of this fact, given the
amount of censorship they require from social media websites and the last-
resort role the Great Firewall plays; there is also the general tolerance of
businesses using VPNs to avoid the Great Firewall).

For what it's worth, there is innovation coming out of China, and it is
happening at an increasing pace as the Chinese economy grows. The freedom to
criticize your government or to organize a protest movement is not really
necessary for technical innovation.

~~~
the_grue
Is it a coincidence that USA was the largest economy on Earth? I don't think
so. On the contrary, I think it became the most powerful country on Earth due
to the free competition of talent and ideas, which is impossible without free
speech.

Besides, Internet, being as wide open to anonymity as it is, simply never
would never have been developed in a country like China, it would be deemed
too dangerous. They may compete these days in electronics, but it doesn't mean
they can compete in everything. Totalitarian society is always rotten in one
way or another, and it manifests in all its output, including business,
science, technology and culture. I'm saying this as a person born in the USSR.

~~~
ionised
The US became the largest economy on Earth because it had 1700's era
technology with which which to settle a colossal landmass rich in natural
resources and with no real enemies to contend with, plus all the immigrants
from all over the world to help make it a reality.

The US started a game of Civilization on easy mode.

~~~
the_grue
Actually, it had colonial powers to contend with, but more importantly,
internal factions. The fact that instead of disintegrating into multiple
warring entities, it united and grew to become the powerful USA, speaks
volumes to the strength of its foundation.

Incidentally, this is precisely where your Civilization analogy goes wrong:
the real newly formed states have way more powerful centrifugal factors than
those embedded into mechanics of the game.

------
DBCerigo
For those inclined to disengage with Google and its products, this is a
previous HN post on exactly that:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17280558](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17280558)

------
alexandercrohde
I would not tolerate a company that build physical handcuffs to keep an entire
population from expressing their opinion.

I feel comparably icky about "mental handcuffs."

~~~
iamshs
What a beautiful description.

------
cutler
Brilliant business strategy. 1. Profess "Don't Be Evil" 2\. Dominate the
market. 3. Be as evil as you like.

~~~
gt_
Americans call this simply “business strategy”.

The “brilliant” descriptor depends how many millions of dollars they make.

------
enitihas
When Tim Cook backs China’s vision of an ‘open’ Internet in a Chinese forum,
HN says that at least Apple is providing some service to the Chinese users,
who will have worse services if apple drops out of China. Apple routinely
blocks apps on the request of the Chinese government. But if Goole too decides
to provides services to China, in accordance with Chinese law, the reaction is
so different here. Not taking any sides here, just highlighting the different
ways different companies are judged on HN.

~~~
blub
HN is not an entity that says things, you're referring to specific people.
Yeah, it is known that there are many supporting various despicable practices.

If you cared about doing the right thing instead of keeping score you would
support this criticism of Google (and also criticize Apple and others).

~~~
enitihas
The point of highlighting Apple's behaviour is not to discount Google's, or to
prove an aggregate bias in HN's comments, but to put to light the fact that
another corporation much respected for it's stance on privacy as a fundamental
right does similar things. It helps in collating the big picture(which does
indeed look bleak), which may get lost amidst voices criticising the behaviour
of a single corporation.

~~~
xvector
But I think you're missing that Apple's encryption model protects user data
from hostile servers (Secure Enclave). Google's encryption model... does not.

------
quirkot
Small reminder that companies must submit all source code for review if they
do business in China

~~~
afroboy
That seems not believable at all i'd like to see source for that, i find hard
to believe Apple, Oracle and such companies that are very protective for their
code to submitted to one of most copy past countries in the world.

~~~
tgsovlerkhgsel
I've heard about this in the form of "if you want to sell hardware, you have
to give them the blueprints", and companies doing it because they want to do
business there.

I wouldn't be surprised if this included the source code of everything that
ships with the device, but I'd think it doesn't extend to server-side code.

------
jdlyga
China slows down all non-domestic traffic. Even using a VPN, sites still load
slow. It's kind of a tariff system to encourage local internet companies and
discourage outside companies. Which is why they have WeChat and not Facebook
dominating their society. And anyone who doesn't want to play by the
government rules is blocked.

------
benologist
The $100b+ they have in the bank made it inevitable they needed to open a
massive new oppressive market ASAP.

Succumbing to an onerous government is something companies with $100b+ in the
bank just have to do to survive, like classify workers as contractors to not
pay health care or move profits around to not pay taxes.

------
awinter-py
Wonder how Uber's experience in China will play out here -- people variously
interpret it as state interference clearing the path for local competitors OR
Didi being much better at meeting chinese cultural expectations for taxis.

This feels like a very different world than 1998 when G could launch an
upstart search engine with 'free the world's information' in their DNA. in
1998 even in the tech bubble people still had no idea how the open web
platform would be used. Now it's some combination of closed platform
dominance, cookie farms, land grabs and spam.

Not surprising G is under pressure to play ball in china; the prevalence of
android there (albeit in weird open forms sans G maps & tools) gives the
government a geopolitical interest in tying some strings.

------
_zachs
Where are the troves of Googler's who were against helping the US military?
They're totally cool with helping China censor information?

~~~
dragonwriter
Yes, people that support the PRC regime tend to also oppose the US military.
How is this even the least bit surprising?

~~~
brainfog
Are you seriously arguing that folks against maven were PRC shills?

~~~
pathseeker
Nobody said anything about shills. You can be anti-US and pro-China without
being a shill.

~~~
brainfog
I guess I just don't get the original comment. Even if some prc supporters
oppose the US military, what on earth does that have to do with the (equally
silly but for different reasons) "where are all the people who were against
maven?" question if not to paint the majority of maven opponents as prc
shills?

------
squarefoot
As much as I don't like Google, lets not forget that corporations aren't
subject to human morality, which is the number one problem in our current
economic model. All companies soon or later become "evil" if that translates
into more profits. That evil has nothing to do with the biblical evil or a
comic book villain concept ("Muhaha, I'll conquer the world!") but rather with
total lack of empathy which in a human is usually a sign of serious, more
often dangerous, mental issues. We gave corporations the power of ruining
lives; that's the problem, not just Google which is simply a creature adapting
to the environment it lives in.

~~~
mindfulhack
But they are subject to the law, which I know ≠ human morality, but it is a
machine that our economic model does interact with in the real world.

And on this, maybe there could be international / trans-national legal rules
(enforced by major legal jurisdictions like US/EU) that could ban companies
who economically operate in the west (with all our human rights freedoms),
from breaking these human rights institutions in the east (i.e. even outside
the US/EU jurisdictions) - forcing them to choose between one region's human
rights standards or the other.

------
mike_ivanov
I don't get why people are complaining about Google doing it in China. They
obviously need to test their innovations somewhere. Do you expect Google to
drop new features like this on the North American market without proper QA?

------
schuke
Thank God please bring it back. Some Google is better than no Google at all.
Freedom of speech sounds and looks aloft but in reality Google’s absence does
far more harm to Chinese customers and citizens than a censored version.

------
bokertov
IMO, obeying Chinese law is similar to obeying GDPR. It's not smart for any
corporation to fight governments.

~~~
phyzome
And many corporations that don't specifically do business in the EU chose not
to comply with the GDPR, which is fine. (I mean, I like the GDPR, and wish
they would comply, but it's valid.)

The consequences for Google not obeying the demands of China are just...
getting blocked in China, no?

------
xs
This is interesting timing. I just released a podcast episode today about the
history of the relationship between Google and China. To get caught up on
what's going on listen to this.
[https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/19/](https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/19/)

------
idoescompooters
Just when I thought the US-China tensions would lead to positive progress in
reducing China's censorship.

------
hnbroseph
"chinese government controversies"

google: "your search did not match any documents"

"alternative political parties"

google: "your search did not match any documents"

...that said the titanic amount of noise and misinformation on the web itself
becomes a sort of censorship.

------
smsm42
What I recently heard is that there are Google workers actively protesting
against Google's involvement with projects connected to US DoD and US Army.
What I am not hearing now is Google workers actively protesting against Google
enabling censorship and oppression in China. I wonder whether this is an
artifact of how news are reported (or how I am consuming new) or a genuine
phenomenon? And if the latter, why is that?

~~~
ibrault
It sounds like the source for the leak is an insider, although the author is
very cautious to tiptoe around saying that.

> which is being planned by a handful of top executives and managers at the
> company

This quote also paints it as a very hush-hush project that isn't under
development yet, so maybe not widespread internal knowledge?

~~~
smsm42
> It sounds like the source for the leak is an insider

Possible. Then again, why public open protests in one case and a clandestine
leak in another? Does it imply protesting some things would be tolerated much
easier by the management than the other - like protesting working with US
government is OK, but protesting working with Chinese government is risky?

> This quote also paints it as a very hush-hush project

Possible. Though not that hush-hush anymore, so let's see what happens now.

------
hahahaha23
if this is true, google has lost its soul! So disappointed...

I will have to switch to duck duck go

------
Alir3z4
Each country has its own rules and for sure any company wishing to operate
there should abide.

Be from North Korea or Cuba etc and then see if PayPal opens an account for
you. I don't see PayPal fights for it, they simply abide the law and move on.

You have a company and the gov gives you tons of regulations that most of them
are unfair? Your problem, take it or leave it.

~~~
ainiriand
You cannot open in NK because it has a trade block imposed by the US.
Something similar was happening with Cuba or Iran. Let me tell you that
abiding and legitimating freedom opressing regimes is not very american, even
if it is for money.

~~~
afroboy
> Let me tell you that abiding and legitimating freedom opressing regimes is
> not very american, even if it is for money.

This is really far from the truth,Israel and Saudi arabia are example how this
is bullshit.

~~~
alexandercrohde
If you have examples where America puts money before the freedom of the
individual to have a political opinion, then it's those examples that need to
change, not our standard of America.

~~~
ainiriand
Nailed. I tried to convey both things. First how America is blocking some
countries for political reasons linked with democracy and liberty. On the
other side of the spectrum there is the need to trade with some shady regimes.
This is the side in which America needs to be more firm. Regarding China, we
should not celebrate that an American company legitimates this censorship.
Moreso (more-so?) when the company itself made billions on top of a technology
designed for sharing information in an open way.

------
babsHeinz
Because Google's search engine isn't censored in the rest of its locations?

~~~
crunchlibrarian
Yeah it's strange how nobody talks about the fact that google search is
getting less and less relevant and more and more filled with garbage every
year. It's downright terrible, I have to go to social media or search with
lots of domain operators (if I can remember them) to actually find what I'm
looking for.

I'm sure google's "analytics" say they are doing great and results are more
relevant and engaging for them and their corporate partners than ever, but I
am often walking away from a search not finding what I know still exists on
the web. They are just a massive media conglomerate trying to promote other
massive media orgs and their content, content that doesn't live in that bubble
is increasingly out of bounds.

~~~
beauzero
It's funny you say that. DDG, 2 years ago, was hard for me to use (less
relevant). The last 3 months especially, they are about the same. I have a
limited search set though...mostly .NET code searches.

~~~
MrEldritch
I personally find that for a lot of queries, especially ones of the "trivial"
or "smart" kind where I'm looking for some old meme or bit of fandom trivia,
DDG often returns results that are noticeably worse. Not _much_ worse, and not
_always_ \- but often enough that if I don't find something on DDG, I
frequently try the same search on Google anyway.

That said, DDG isn't _that_ much worse than Google in terms of search quality,
and is perfectly fine for more "serious" queries - It's an inferior user
experience, admittedly, but I'm willing to drink RC Cola instead of drinking
cane-sugar old-recipe Coke that also is contaminated with lead.

~~~
394549
I always try DuckDuckGo first, and if I have trouble, then I fall back to
Google. It doesn't cost me much, and I figure if I just default to Google then
I'm endorsing a stagnant search market. It's better to support competitors to
give them space to improve.

------
07d046
I wonder if Google employees will be as outraged about this as they reportedly
were about Project Maven...

~~~
microdrum
Google has no morals. Only marketing.

------
tyu100
This is less of a moral cliff than it was a few years ago, given how many
restrictions the EU is placing on Google right now, between right-to-be-
forgotten and hate speech laws.

------
j45
Once this happens once... for one country, is it too far off to be available
to any other country, regardless of it's interpretation or practice of
politics?

------
tomohawk
Wonder if there will be another internal petition of google employees, this
time demanding that google not kowtow to government of China.

------
mrnobody_67
Related:
[https://gizmodo.com/setsession?r=https%3A%2F%2Fgizmodo.com%2...](https://gizmodo.com/setsession?r=https%3A%2F%2Fgizmodo.com%2Fgoogle-
removes-nearly-all-mentions-of-dont-be-evil-
from-1826153393&sessionId=e6dccfad-0392-4efb-9a49-18d4cd9b7023)

~~~
kyrra
Except that story headline is a lie.

See my post in the other Google thread from today about this:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17663090](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17663090)

------
mehblahwhatevs
Wow hopefully this means I'll be able to use Firebase in China.

------
known
Google already has a winsome search engine for mobile platform

------
est
another thread
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17661214](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17661214)

------
your-nanny
Do no evil... unless it's gonna make us a TON?

------
jessesoo
From a business standpoint, I think it's only stupid for Google not to revisit
such a huge market, then I wonder if they really have other choices that make
business sense?

------
dooglius
Sad, but ultimately unsurprising

------
crispinb
A tactically-'ethical' startup of the near future's motto: "Don't be Google".

~~~
pixelpoet
It is definitely worse to have a startup phase with the motto "don't be evil"
and then later remove it once they've got everyone's data.

~~~
SquareWheel
Please do not spread misinformation. They never changed their motto.

[https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-
conduct.html](https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct.html)

~~~
thinkingemote
How about this for accuracy: "It is definitely worse to have a startup phase
with the motto 'don't be evil' and then later heavily demote it once they've
got everyone's data"

~~~
SquareWheel
Still reads as irrational to me, but at least it's technically accurate.

It's worth remembering that "data" as they say stales very quickly. Knowing
that you ordered a package two months ago is far less interesting than knowing
you're expecting one next week. Or that you'll be booking a plane trip soon,
and wouldn't you just love to know Delta is cheapest on that date?

"Having your data" isn't a binary concept. Their services degrade
substantially once you turn off the firehose. You'll still get ads, but they
won't be tailored to you. Maps won't be able to show your current position.
Assistant won't be able to recognize your voice.

And that's fine, if you prefer that approach. But the concept of "having your
data" in a historical context is meaningless. The only thing that matters is
if that firehose is still available to them.

Turn it off if you like. It isn't a lost cause.

~~~
smsm42
> It's worth remembering that "data" as they say stales very quickly. Knowing
> that you ordered a package two months ago is far less interesting than
> knowing you're expecting one next week.

Comparatively less, yes, but knowing about all your packages is still _very_
interesting and hugely privacy sensitive.

> You'll still get ads, but they won't be tailored to you.

TBH, all tailoring I've seen is comically bad. Yeah, they can know I bought
shoes so they would show me shoe ads for the next three months. As if that's
how humans behave - once we're in "shoe heat", we do nothing but buy shoes for
three months and the task of the good ad system is to capture when the "shoe
heat" starts and capitalize on it. I think if one wrote a comedy show about
robots trying to understand human society and getting it hilariously wrong
every time, the behavior of ad networks could supply great material for years.

> But the concept of "having your data" in a historical context is
> meaningless.

No it's not. There's a lot of private things in one's past than can be dug up
and (ab)used. Ask any politician who went through an electoral campaign.

~~~
SquareWheel
>Yeah, they can know I bought shoes so they would show me shoe ads for the
next three months.

You might be surprised. Some people buy far more shoes than they need. Be it
for fashion or simply the love of shopping, I wouldn't be surprised at all if
targeting shoe ads at recent shoppers actually made sense.

>No it's not. There's a lot of private things in one's past than can be dug up
and (ab)used.

I'm speaking strictly in terms of their business model and services. That's
where live data is essential. Fear of potential blackmail seems pretty far
removed from that context.

------
matz1
Nice, hopefully this will make my trip to China less annoying.

------
KenanSulayman
What does "censored" mean in this context? No anti-communist or anti-party
propaganda?

Personally I feel that Google has slowly become more and more censored over
the recent years, to the point that I do searches on multiple search engines
if I'm not so sure about the Google results.

More than often there's not only a filter-bubble in my results, but there's
more and more sites that suddenly disappeared over the years, but are high-
ranking on DDG, Bing, Yandex, ... — especially in February / March 2018 there
was a kind-of-extreme disappearance of sites in the results where I previously
used Google to get to them.

~~~
samhamilton
Means they will hide the same stuff Bing has and will hide more stuff as and
when the gov tells them to. You want to be inside the firewall you need to be
“legal”

------
londons_explore
Too late...

They will never overtake Baidu, who have leaks of Googles algorithm, more data
to train AI on, government support, an existing (better) product in asian
languages, and a massive userbase.

~~~
howlingfantods
I'm sure they'll be able to overtake Baidu. Baidu's search product is
terrible. The results are almost always unusable. The only times I find them
useful is when it links to a quora-equivalent website where someone has asked
your exact query.

~~~
kryptiskt
However good or bad the product is, I would be very surprised if the Chinese
government would allow Google to win significant market share against domestic
companies. They might want Google in China for leverage, but they certainly
wouldn't want them to be dominant.

~~~
Apfel
My immediate reaction was "how can the CCP possibly cripple Google so much
that Baidu can compete?". Anyone who's lived in China will have passionate
views on how terrible Baidu's product is.

If there is any eastward leakage of Google's code, it's certainly not obvious
in day-to-day usage of Baidu's search engine.

------
nchelluri
Could have sworn I read about this some years ago.

------
novaRom
Search terms about human rights, democracy, religion and peaceful protests
will be among the words blacklisted in the search engine app

This is disgusting! I am not using Google Search anymore because of
Firefox+DDG, but where are alternatives to YouTube, Gmail, Gmaps?

~~~
dartf
PeerTube as a YouTube alternative Fastmail, tutanota, protonmail, etc. as a
Gmail alternative OpenStreetMap as a Google maps alternative.

~~~
394549
> Fastmail

I can wholeheartedly endorse them. One other benefit is that they actually
have real live humans doing customer support. I haven't needed it much (only
when I was setting up my custom domain and feature requests), but it's very
reassuring to know it's there.

It was the stories of people who were permanently locked out of their gmail
accounts _with no recourse and no one to call_ that ultimately caused me to
abandon Google.

------
baybal2
Seeing how launching "a limited Chinese lite version" went for many many many
Western companies in China, I can tell following:

Communists are totally ok with these limited versions, they are more than
eager to "lure in" foreign dotcoms. Their logic is: "let them grow business in
China, when the time comes, their business in China becomes so big, that it
can be held hostage, we can demand them anything"

Look at AirBnB:

They were swearing on the graves of their fathers that you ID verification
data is gone the moment it is verified, .... yet you will be super surprised
to see that if you book a place in China, ALL YOUR ID DATA will be
automatically filed into the form that hotels have to send to Chinese ministry
of interior.

------
manigandham
Why do the 1.4 billion people living there put up with it in the first place?
Why they have just made Jinping a lifetime president? Why are they fine with
their own Chinese tech companies doing this already?

It would help to understand the geopolitical causes of this environment
instead of the constant faux outrage over Google doing what any business does,
which is provide services in accordance to the laws where they operate.

I do not want a world where a few major US tech companies become political
powers. This effort should be directed towards the government forces where it
matters.

~~~
mozey
What is the difference between censorship and management of spam, fake news,
sock puppet accounts etc?

~~~
manigandham
Isn't there a big difference? It's removing fake junk vs hiding truthful
information.

~~~
nostalgeek
Who decides what Junk is? who guards the guardians?

~~~
manigandham
There is such a thing as objective truth.

~~~
nostalgeek
I disagree, facts do exist, the truth has always been a valuable asset for the
ones who knows it. This is what most modern journalists or glorified bloggers
don't get.

~~~
manigandham
What exactly are you disagreeing with then? Or did you reply to the wrong
post?

------
econ4all
There are a couple of recurring themes here:

1\. the hyper-moralising over google's business decisions, they're not the
only company that modifies its business to access the chinese market nor is
the chinese government the only one that demands censorship.

2\. google employees' attempts to sabotage the company's business prospects.

~~~
wu-ikkyu
>hyper-moralising over google's business decisions

People are hyper moralizing because Google is hyper powerful.

"With great power comes great responsibility".

>google employees' attempts to sabotage the company's business prospects.

Perhaps they are doing so because they see these as attemts to sabotage
Google's mission:

"To organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and
useful."

~~~
tanilama
It is because Google put that hyper moralising hat on itself.

In their hay days, they crafted that hippy/liberal/sensible young alpha image
to win customer approval, reducing government regulation and eat market shares
against those faceless corporates.

Now they are the new baddies in town, the image no longer does them any good.
They will retire it by then and be a normal company.

~~~
pnw_hazor
No, they will concentrate their hyper-moralising and virtue signalling on the
US.

China, et al, will get a pass.

------
kiki_jiki
I wonder if Chinese people will be able to search for Winnie the Pooh.

~~~
mocae
Sure they will, but they'll never be able to leave the country, fly or get a
train ticket again.

------
justsomedude43
Money doesn't stink.

------
notbeevil1
not be evil

changed to:

Why not be evil

------
h4b4n3r0
I wonder if this will be met with the same intensity of internal backlash as
their participation in that DoD object detection competition (AKA project
Maven). I mean, helping the authoritarian Chinese government censor the web
seems worse than helping the US government recognize whether there are people
and cars on the ground.

------
aurizon
Google has two choices:- to be outside - looking in, or to be inside - and
engaged. It is axiomatic that China has roots in an oppressive communist
titled government. I say titled because it was not communist in the classical
sense, any more than the former USSR was communist - again in title only.
China will gradually change and adapt - converge, to a more truly
representative government as the middle class expands and the government
learns they have nothing to fear but fear itself. Both former communist
countries are doing far better than under their former party dictatorships.

I suggest everyone read "Gulag Archipelago"

I hope North Korea also is also opened up - engaged, in a similar manner.

~~~
bilbo0s
"...doing far better than under their former party dictatorships..."

Not trying to split hairs or anything, but China _is_ "...under their former
party dictatorship..." It's the same party, the only difference is that the
leaders today are mostly trained engineers and scientists instead of the
mainly political thinkers who preceded them.

~~~
aurizon
Hopefully change will proceed at a faster rate as political hacks go to
pasture.

------
fortythirteen
They have crossed a threshold and, if you continue to use Google products, you
have crossed a threshold.

Google is now a willing and active participant in the coverup of massive human
rights violations, including the open air murder of political protesters. If
you pay for AdSense or G Suite, or even consume the "free" services, you are
financing this.

------
DSingularity
I love free speech. I love individual liberty. I respect the sovereignty of
nations. I believe societies are feee to choose. Should we impose our value
system on the Chinese? No. We should try to relate and understand why the
Chinese people have taken their route.

If and when we find our value systems at odds with those of other people we
cannot conclude that ours is superior and undermine their freedom to choose.
That’s just arrogant and — most importantly — unbecoming when you describe
yourself as an advocate for freedom.

~~~
xvector
> We should try to relate and understand why the Chinese people have taken
> their route.

The _people_ have not taken this route. The _people_ were mowed down in the
thousands during a peaceful protest in Tienamen Square.

> undermine their freedom to choose

They never had the freedom to choose in the first place.

------
throw2016
People who are neck deep in the surveillance economy and have long sold out
can't suddenly pretend to care about ethics without looking insincere.

Given the large majority seem to have no problem with Google, Facebook and
others, and their ability to attract employees is unaffected it's obvious
ethics is not a high priority for current or prospective employees, if
anything the fawning is often cringy.

That also explains why inspite of Snowden's revelations no one really cares
and there is no change. So there is little basis for ethical concern about
China, unless the motive is purely posturing and grandstanding.

