Google Employees Claim Work on Chinese Search Engine Continues

AlphaAtlas

AlphaAtlas

[H]ard|Gawd
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Following protests from externals sources as well as their own employees, Google allegedly shelved their plans to launch the censored "Dragonfly" search engine in China last year. But, according to a recent report, Google employees have discovered that work on Dragonfly is ongoing. Inside sources claim that hundreds of commits to the code have been made last December, January, and February, and that Google's official position on the state of the project is as clear as mud. Google's leadership is said to "have really closed down communication and become significantly less transparent," which is supposedly pushing away some of the company's best engineering talent.

Google bosses had originally planned to launch it between January and April of this year. But they changed course after the outcry over the plan and indicated to employees who were working on the project that it was being shelved... "Right now it feels unlaunchable, but I don't think they are canceling outright," McMillen said. "I think they are putting it on the back burner and are going to try it again in a year or two with a different code name or approach." Anna Bacciarelli, a technology researcher at Amnesty International, called on Google "to publicly confirm that it has dropped Dragonfly for good, not just 'for now.'" Bacciarelli told The Intercept that Amnesty's Secretary General Kumi Naidoo had visited Google's Mountain View headquarters in California last week to reiterate concerns over Dragonfly and "the apparent disregard for transparency and accountability around the project."
 
Not surprised at all. Even if they aren't going to deploy this in China, the tech/code can and likely will be used here. The coastal technocratic elite have decided for us that censorship and mass data collection is the only way to create a "civil", "diverse", and "equal" internet for the future.
 
China already has the biggest share of internet users in the world and that is still rapidly growing. The Chinese market also allows for a huge amount of data collection - both through disregard for privacy and the fact that they have 3x the number of internet users compared to the US. If you are a company investing heavily in AI / machine learning, China is a goldmine. They already failed once in China with their US business model, I think they are trying to stake a claim for big data over there.

I hate the idea of censorship, but I get why Google is pursing this and it has nothing to do with free speech or lack thereof.
 
Google is such a strange beast...
Definitely an evil beast but a strange one. What other company listens to their employees as much as Google does yet is as invasive as Facebook?
 
SamuelL421 said:
China already has the biggest share of internet users in the world and that is still rapidly growing. The Chinese market also allows for a huge amount of data collection - both through disregard for privacy and the fact that they have 3x the number of internet users compared to the US. If you are a company investing heavily in AI / machine learning, China is a goldmine. They already failed once in China with their US business model, I think they are trying to stake a claim for big data over there.

I hate the idea of censorship, but I get why Google is pursing this and it has nothing to do with free speech or lack thereof.
Click to expand...

Yeah when they pulled out they gave MS a huge lead on just that and Microsoft is using that data gold mine for a huge number of AI, translation, and customer interaction projects. The lead it gave them will cost Alphabet billions in future projects so I can see why they would cave to get back into the Chinese market. Project Dragon Fly is dead, long live project Globe Skinner.
 
SamuelL421 said:
China already has the biggest share of internet users in the world and that is still rapidly growing. The Chinese market also allows for a huge amount of data collection - both through disregard for privacy and the fact that they have 3x the number of internet users compared to the US. If you are a company investing heavily in AI / machine learning, China is a goldmine. They already failed once in China with their US business model, I think they are trying to stake a claim for big data over there.

I hate the idea of censorship, but I get why Google is pursing this and it has nothing to do with free speech or lack thereof.
Click to expand...
Google is helping to normalize censorship and oppression by doing this. Fuck their bottomline (something you would have never caught me saying a few years ago, but I'm beginning to see the error of my anarcho-capitalist ways).
 
I am thinking that Dragonfly was canceled as Google claimed. By amazing coincidence Project Horsefly was started at the same time using much of the leftover code from Dragonfly.

Wouldn't be too surprised to see a subsidiary spun off from Google in cooperation with a China company to handle things like this. Would allow the American Google to still get a piece of the profits while claiming they don't have operational control of the China subsidiary.
 
This is the company who’s morals supposedly made it impossible to work with the American Department of Defence.
 
I don't know how the company that has "do no evil" in it's bylaws can justify this exercise.
 
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