Chinese search engine with government filters is not yet under discussion
Google ‘s motto was always’ Do not be evil’, but lately there have been some cracks in it. First there was already the story that Google worked on a defense project for AI-drones in the US on the battlefield, and recently came out that Google search engine (again) in China to release ]but with all the filters that the ruling party would like to have. Thick censorship.
Now Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google, told the [Wall Street Journal] that it will not go so far with that search engine in China. It is a response to the evil outside world that does not have that idea, but especially the employees. The tenor is that the company really does contribute to violating human rights in China and so the idea is also not popular internally.
It is also quite a bit: the search engine that Google would publish in China would literally filter search terms such as human rights, democracy, religion and peaceful protest for people using Google from China. Then the question is what the search giant can add to the Chinese search traffic on the internet, except of course, to make money for Google.
Human rights before profit
There is also the problem: this is such a transparent decision that would not yield anything more than more money for Google, while knowingly keeping an entire people under the control of a regime . What is not ‘evil’ about that? Pichai can say that the search engine in China is far from fact, but what does that mean if it is the intention? Perhaps there is more nuance in the story, but Google does not prove itself to be a service by not being transparent about the plan at this stage.