Business: Google employees protest planned China search engine. C7
Workers sign letter against censored Chinese search engine
Google employees have stepped up their campaign against a planned search engine in China, with dozens signing their names to a public letter urging the company to drop Project Dragonfly.
“We are among thousands of employees who have raised our voices for months” reads the letter, which was published Tuesday on Medium. “So far, our leadership’s response has been unsatisfactory.” Google’s Dragonfly project has been met with resistance since it will be a censored search engine for China.
As of Tuesday morning, more than 90 employees had signed the letter, which originally had just a handful of signatures. The letter is being updated with additional signatures
as they come in.
Also Tuesday, Amnesty International launched a petition urging Google to drop Project Dragonfly, which the Google employees mention in their letter.
The Silicon Valley giant closed down search in China in 2010 after that nation attacked Gmail and other sites in its effort to crack down on Chinese human rights activists. But over the summer, the Intercept reported that Google plans to revive its search engine in China, and would blacklist certain search terms to comply with that nation’s laws.
At the time, more than 1,000 Google employees reportedly urged the company to reconsider, and several quit. One research scientist who left expressed concern not only about a censored search engine in China, but also about Google possibly hosting data there. That data could make dissidents’ information available to the Chi- An activist wearing a Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg mask stands outside Portcullis House in Westminster in London on Tuesday.