Man, this is one thing I’d not thought to consider before… but here we are mid-2018 and now it’s a thing. I’ve been a fan of Google since the beginning. I have multiple Gmail accounts set up for lots of different services. I host our family’s blog on Blogspot. And for almost a year now I’ve been using a Samsung Galaxy S8+ phone (and still loving it, even after the Apple iPhone event this week, no jealousies here!). But there’s been stirrings in the past few months or so about Google working on a search engine specifically tailored for China, code name Dragonfly. Even though they’ve not publicly commented AT ALL* yet (Pichai mentioned in a meeting that it’s in the “exploratory” stage), there’s pretty strong evidence that it’s moving forward… they’ve had over a thousand employees sign a letter against it and even had several leave the company in recent days. What is so concerning is that it appears (again, from hearsay) Google is making this fully compliant with China’s censorship rules. This is also a 180 degree change from Google’s stance for pulling out of China back in 2010… because of Chinese gov’t hacking and crackdown on free speech. Talk about irony.
The Intercept released information today that Dragonfly in China will link a person’s cell number with the searches they make, thus making it very easy for government officials to track users. Dragonfly would not only use the China-controlled search term black list, it also seems “to have been tailored to replace weather and air pollution data with information provided directly by an unnamed source in Beijing.” The more we hear about Dragonfly (and the louder the silence coming from Google), it looks very much like Google is truly capitulating on their “Don’t be evil” motto… all because they smell so much money there in China.
So, my quandary. IF Dragonfly is a true project that Google is fully intent on pursuing, and they make some official word about it, I’m in a dilemma between fully taking myself off Google’s customer list and killing my use of their services (is that even possible?!) OR be complicit myself in supporting their actions towards China by continuing to use them wholeheartedly. I really really hope Google does the right thing and sticks to their moral guns (yeah I know that’s a stretch but come on you know what I mean) and declares very soon that Dragonfly is just something like a research project that they refuse to implement, and then kill these rumors.
It’s not looking good right now. I’m pessimistically of the opinion that I should start making plans…
- Updated with their official response/no-response: “…our work on search has been exploratory, and we are not close to launching a search product in China.”
Update 9/21: Yeah, so much for transparency… Google bosses have forced employees to delete a confidential memo circulating inside the company that revealed explosive details about a plan to launch a censored search engine in China… Also interesting to learn how militant the big G has become recently with their internal security and investigative teams.
Update 9/21: Also, THIS straight from Pichai’s memo on biasing search results (in response to Trump’s recent remarks), just how does this ethically jive with work on Dragonfly? Italics are mine: “We feel privileged to be building a product that provides instant access to information for everyone, everywhere—whether you’re a PhD from MIT, or a student on the other side of the world using a computer for the first time.”. . . “It’s important to me that our internal culture continues to reinforce our mission to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”
Update 10/9: I hope Google gets smacked down really hard now, this is ridiculous: Leaked Transcript of Private Meeting Contradicts Google’s Official Story on China. To quote: “Ben Gomes Addresses Google Staff Working on Dragonfly, July 18, 2018”. What a bunch of liars. Can’t wait to see how this works out.