Google’s Secret China Project “Effectively Ended” After Internal Confrontation

Re:Google’s Secret China Project “Effectively Ended” After I... by jeremysalwen on Monday December 17, 2018 @05:43PM (#18702937)

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...

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Re:Google’s Secret China Project “Effectively Ended” After I... by adrianmonk on Monday December 17, 2018 @07:20PM (#18703528)

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.

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Re:Google’s Secret China Project “Effectively Ended” After I... by londons_explore on Monday December 17, 2018 @08:14PM (#18703792)

There were other, bigger, non-public reasons.

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Re:Google’s Secret China Project “Effectively Ended” After I... by dyarosla on Monday December 17, 2018 @09:11PM (#18704012)

Care to elaborate?

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Re:Google’s Secret China Project “Effectively Ended” After I... by londons_explore on Thursday December 20, 2018 @06:30AM (#18724028)

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

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Re:Google’s Secret China Project “Effectively Ended” After I... by baybal2 on Tuesday December 18, 2018 @08:07AM (#18706154)

> > 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.

It reads to me like: "I really oppose prostitution, but I go to prostitutes anyways"

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