Why do you think censored search engine is bad? All other search engine in China have same censorship but worse quality. Why it's bad to have another censored search engine with higher quality?

Or do you want to say you can't have better search engine until the whole censorship is overhauled? If that's the case, why not first stop use oil from Middle East until the war is complete ended there?

The argument is that Google shouldn't build a censored search engine for one authoritarian state, because once it's built, it's easier for other states to ask for the same treatment. China's existing censored search engines are confined to that country, and I would also oppose any adoption of those services in the US.

(As a side note: Is it wrong of me to be suspicious of comments on HN that are enthusiastically pro-China because they have English grammar errors in every sentence? Maybe, but I'm going to do that anyway.)

> Is it wrong of me to be suspicious of comments on HN that are enthusiastically pro-China because they have English grammar errors in every sentence? Maybe, but I'm going to do that anyway.

I think it's wrong of you to label someone as "enthusiastically pro-China" for thinking that having access to a censored version of Google would improve the state of the Chinese search engine market (without using VPNs, anyway). That's more of an anti-China position.

If you ignore comments by Chinese people on China (presumably because you suspect them of being government shills?) you're just discounting the opinion of those with actual first-hand experience and an incentive to see things improve.

It's also worth considering that besides this thread, the only other post from that account was "Wow, GTA V IRL.". I think it's reasonable to be suspicious of the veracity of the account.

>Why it's bad to have another censored search engine with higher quality?

Again, this isn't exactly my personal opinion but the obvious difference is this is one of the US's largest tech companies participating, not some Chinese company that US citizens are not familiar with.

>why not first stop use oil from Middle East until the war is complete ended there

Google employees have the power to protest Google projects, not big oil projects.

The funny thing is that Google search engine is already censored in various parts of the world.

E.g. 1. Right to be forgotten. 2. DMCA. (differing views on this). 3. Russia (?)

1) is different in quality. possibly 2), too, but I don't know enought about it.

in CH, search engines are state-censored for political reasons - mainly to keep in power a semi-dictatorship.

the right to be forgotten was implemented to protect individual rights. one may or may not agree with such a protection. however, the motivation was not systematic political censorship.

edit: missing word.

I'm guessing you typo'd CN as CH, as CH is Switerland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-2:CH but if you mean CH (the post you were mention other agency supervision) could you share more?

Their regular search engine is already censored. Do you think those top 10 results are really the actual unfettered top 10? What do you specifically consider "censorship?"

Microsoft has a censored search engine live in China right now, where is the backlash against them?

I'm sure all three users revolted.

There's literally dozens of them. Dozens!

Nobody expected any better from Microsoft. That's a lost cause.

My objection isn't even the censorship (I mean, I object to that too, but to a lesser degree).

My primary objection is that Google is (was?) arranging the system so that every user is identified and, if they search for something forbidden, are reported to the government.

Search engines are already censored.

Exactly. There are many websites which won't show up in a Google search in the West also, even if you search for their exact domain name. Some of them can be found on other search engines, some other maybe not.

So it must be that the opponents of this project are not opposed to censorship in general, but to censorship as applied in the People's Republic of China.

Right. The West's censorship is somewhat about fighting crime, protecting at-risk people, protecting people from themselves, and so on. But it's also about protecting the status quo. And, as much as I wouldn't like living in China, their censorship is arguably not that different. At most, there's more emphasis on protecting the status quo.