1. Google would be absolutely fine if they do not expand into China. They would not collapse or lose their competitive edge if they refrained from doing so. You've worked at Google for over a decade so you should know this is true.
2. Google's censored search engine would absolutely facilitate Xi Jinping ability to censor the Chinese people and would set a dangerous precedent for other governments to make similar demands.
Google, which is already one of the wealthiest and most secure companies in the world, is developing a tool for suppression and bending to the demands of a dictator in the name of profit. Perhaps you have a different moral stance than I do, Ari, but I see nothing "gray" about this blind pursuit of money at the cost of over a billion people's free will.
Considered at a global scale, however, the outcomes of the collisions of interests of the many groups involved does not make this a simple issue. We have to examine, and this is not completely granular nor exhaustive list:
1. The interests of Google "the company" (execs) 2. The interests of the Chinese nation state 3. The interests of the Chinese people 4. The interests of the US nation state 5. The interests of Google employees
All of these interests intersect in interesting ways and the groups behind them may be for or against the motion. For example, Chinese citizens might be excited at the prospect of getting a higher quality search engine, even if it censors some results. The US might be interested in a broader form of censorship (no Google at all) in order to maintain some kind of global hegemony (or vice versa, to bring money into the US from a foreign market). The Chinese government may be interested in the service for different purposes than those of its citizens (tracking).
The list goes on.
I agree that the threat of a dangerous precedent is in play, but I also would like to point out that simply because a precedent was established doesn't make further applications of it inviolable, nor does it prevent an actor (e.g. Google) from breaking an agreement if they discover their tooling has been used for purposes more nefarious than basic censorship (e.g. putting people in prison camps).
There's not even anything binding Google to democratic principles nor the interests of the US nation state. We may like to think companies reflect our values as a nation, but outside of those imposed by the law, there is nothing binding them to doing so.
I'm not an advocate of the project, but I do think painting it as a simple moral question glosses over the many nuances and complexities of the issue. In some respects I find taking a reductive approach to these issues and treating them as unproblematic black/white moral questions is also dangerous, as not fully exploring the issue in its depth prevents us from seeing the potentially major effects a decision may have.
1. Will Google really be fine? China is the up and coming superpower of the century. How many large corporations from Britain in the late 1800s / early 1900s are still large that didn't invest in the US?
2. Doesn't Xi Jinping already have this ability to an even greater degree with Baidu/other Chinese tech companies? I do worry about the precedent.
Who are we to ignore the will of the majority of Chinese folks I've seen that do want Google to come to their country, even in this censored form?
Are you ashamed of it? There's more than a little irony in this complaint, given that scraping and republishing publicly available information is Google's core product - indeed the odds are high that OP literally used Google to do this.
Alphabet is a Deleware corporation, where executives that leave money on the table for moral reasons have to at least claim that it was their business judgment that the action would ultimately increase profits for shareholder value in the long term.
There are many arguments those executives could make, such as that employees could get dissatisfied with the company and cost them more in the long run, so it is important for employees to be loud about it.
Naw. In order for the directors to be stopped by 'leaving money on the table' someone would need to bring a claim against them. One which they would almost certainly lose.
And then even if someone did, the executives wouldn't even need to make the claim that the actions ultimately increased profits at all, because the courts just toss them a strong presumption for free.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_judgment_rule
You're repeating a lie. Stop it.
It's meaningless and always has been. Why do people think that this cheesy phrase makes any difference for a giant corporation?
> Why do people think that this cheesy phrase makes any difference for a giant corporation?
Speaking for myself. I thought it made a difference as part of the charter, with the expectation that overtly evil behavior can be punished eith real teeth (shareholder lawsuits for violating the charter)
This is a dumb take. Googlers are the one reporting/protesting all of these things. This is a very different situation than Facebook where most of the leaking has been external. It's also different than HN's reaction to Apple, which apparently can whatever it wants to its Chinese users.
The world is not black and white, it is gray. And some companies are more active than others in trying to find a balance between morality and realism.