When I worked at Google, as an engineer on Google News, I was asked to write code to censor news articles in China (circa 2006). I refused and they took me off the project and put someone else on it.
Doesn't surprise me Google is back at it. "Don't be Evil" is a Google myth.
Doesn't surprise me Google is back at it. "Don't be Evil" is a Google myth.
Since this is getting some attention, I want to explain what happened in more detail.
At the time Google was censoring Web results, but this was widely known. It was a conscious decision: being in China and censoring was better for the Chinese people than not being there at all.
At the time Google was censoring Web results, but this was widely known. It was a conscious decision: being in China and censoring was better for the Chinese people than not being there at all.
Or at least that was the rationalization.
It was not widely known that Google intended to censor News in China. So I got up at an engineering "all hands" meeting (few hundred people) and complained about what we were going to do. Ironically, I got some applause for this.
It was not widely known that Google intended to censor News in China. So I got up at an engineering "all hands" meeting (few hundred people) and complained about what we were going to do. Ironically, I got some applause for this.
Nothing immediately came of this so I also emailed the CEO, Eric Schmidt, and complained. He referred my complaint to Alan Eustace who was a Senior VP of engineering at the time. Nothing came of it and the policy of censoring went ahead.
It was only a while later that Sergey Brin pressed for Google to leave China. His childhood experience growing up in the Soviet Union under an oppressive regime obviously influenced his thinking on this.
It's a more than a little ironic to see a recent video of Googlers in open anguish at Hillary Clinton losing the recent US election while simultaneously working to aid an oppressive regime overseas.
(btw Google keeps the emails of old employees even after they leave. These details should be able to be corroborated if necessary)
Damn, this tweet better not get more likes than this one 😯
D'oh
Andrew McLaughlin, Google’s former director of public policy, said that Brin’s “background as a refugee made him inherently more suspicious of doing business in an environment like that.”
qz-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/qz.com/134…
qz-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/qz.com/134…
