On this episode of China Uncensored,
I miss Ask Jeeves.
Welcome back to China Uncensored,
I’m your host Chris Chappell.
Good news, everyone!
Google has finally taken the chains off.
Back in May,
Google removed its famous “don’t be evil” motto
from its code of conduct.
Google’s new motto is:
Don’t let anyone find out that you’re evil.
Moral relativism is cool.
What is evil, anyway?
Don’t be unprofitable.
Don’t learn from your mistakes.
No, history never repeats itself.
Or at least that’s what I assume from this article from the Intercept.
It turns out, there’s a tratorious Google employee who still hasn’t
gotten the hang of being evil but hiding it per company policy.
Because that employee revealed Google’s top secret project:
making a censored Android app for China that uses their search engine.
The secret project is called Dragonfly,
and it’s allegedly been in the works among a select number of employees
since the spring of 2017.
We reached out to Google for comment about their search engine in China.
Their “Google Spokesperson” said they do have mobile apps in China,
but they don’t comment on speculation about future plans.
It’s like if your wife asks,
“You’re not going to eat that entire box of Cheez-Its
in one sitting, are you?”
And you reply,
“There are things I’m going to eat,
but I don’t comment on specific future eating plans.”
So China has a pretty big internet market:
750 million Internet users.
That’s bigger than the entire population of Europe.
And it seems like,
well there’s a ton of money Google could be making in China.
And now that Google isn’t concerned about not being evil,
they can finally tap into it.
With the help of an “unnamed” Chinese partner company.
As you know, the Chinese Communist Party
likes to keep a tight grip on the Internet.
Otherwise Chinese citizens might learn dangerous things,
like how their government was totally willing to massacre
a bunch of students in Tiananmen Square.
With the new Google search engine app for Android,
Chinese people don’t need to know all that.
Because they won’t even be able to find links
to troubling informational websites with y
ou know, facts—
like the BBC or Wikipedia.
Now you might be concerned that Google’s
new alleged Chinese search engine would create
some kind of bad precedent.
That, if the biggest search engine in the world
is willing to cave to Chinese censorship demands,
why should any company resist?
It’s a fair point, but may I remind you
HOW MUCH MONEY IS ON THE LINE HERE, PEOPLE!
In fact, maybe Google’s new motto is actually:
Don’t be unprofitable.
After all, being evil can make you so much more money.
Clearly that important point was lost on the Google employee
who leaked the secret plan.
He told The Intercept,
“I’m against large companies and governments collaborating
in the oppression of their people,
and feel like transparency around
what’s being done is in the public interest,”
and that “what is done in China will become a template f
or many other nations.”
What?
Are you saying that this will embolden
other authoritarian nations
to further limit free information?
Well, don’t worry,
because other authoritarian nations don’t have
750 million internet users.
Cha-ching.
Google is a company with 88,000 employees.
You can’t expect them all to have jumped on
the evil is okay bandwagon.
So to minimize the chance of leaks,
only “a handful of top executives and managers,”
knew about project Dragonfly.
Executives like the current CEO.
Last December, he travelled to China
and met with top Communist Party officials,
who had great money-making ideas,
as communist officials always do.
That same month,
Google opened an artificial intelligence
research center in Beijing.
In May, they brought their file management app
to the Chinese market.
And in July, they launched a fun game
for the popular Chinese messaging app WeChat.
Let’s just say there are some privacy concerns about WeChat.
Clearly not a concern for Google, though!
In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if Google’s unnamed
Chinese partner company is Tencent,
the maker of WeChat.
I wonder if this new app will also give user data
directly to the Chinese government,
just like WeChat does!
Now some people have compared Google’s move to
the shameful history of IBM in Nazi Germany.
I mean, I’m not making that comparison.
I’m just saying, some people have—
and now you know that.
But giving in to the Chinese regime
isn’t actually new for Google.
They were in China before.
In 2006, Google set up
a highly censored version of their search engine
for the Chinese market.
And Google got slammed for it.
Here’s a clip from a 2006 Congressional hearing about
American tech companies.
US Congressman Chris Smith was not too happy with Google.
“When a user enters a forbidden word,
such as ‘democracy’ or ‘Chinese torture’ or ‘Falun Gong,’
the search results are blocked,
or you are redirected to a misleading site,
and the user’s computer can be frozen
for unspecified periods of time…”
“...It is hard not to draw the conclusion that Google
has seriously compromised its ‘Don’t Be Evil’ policy.”
Well guess what, foolish politician actually trying to call out
a big corporation for it shady behavior?
Google doesn’t have the “don’t be evil” policy anymore.
Take that!
Problem solved.
So what happened to that censored Chinese version of Google
that Congressman Smith was complaining about in 2006?
Four years later, Google backed out.
In a 2010 official blog post, they said:
Guess what?
The Chinese Communist Party hacked us.
And they targeted the gmail accounts of human rights activists.
Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal.
Google stood up to the evil Chinese regime.
They announced that they were uncensoring their search engine,
and if that meant the regime kicked them out of China,
so be it.
And so it was.
Google co-founder Sergey Brin,
who partly grew up in the Soviet Union,
told the Wall Street Journal that he was worried about
China’s totalitarianism.
And, at the time,
I praised Google for doing the right thing.
It turned out later,
their pull-out might have been about
more than just doing what was right.
It was also maybe because they were
hardly making any money in China.
But don’t worry.
Google is under new leadership now!
And their new motto is:
Don’t learn from your mistakes.
Because, the lesson from this should have been:
It’s really hard for Google to make money in the Chinese market
because the Chinese regime will always
stack the cards against you in favor of Chinese companies
while also hacking you and stealing your intellectual property.
But the lesson the new Google CEO took was:
If at first you don’t succeed,
try, try again.
But now with more evil.
The sad part is,
Google is hardly alone in wanting to be in China:
Bing and Yahoo already have censored search engines there,
although they have a fraction of the market share
of Chinese companies like Baidu.
Apple has made a huge investment in China.
And we all know that Mark Zuckerberg
will literally run through the Beijing smog
to get Facebook there.
But at one point, Google was alone
in standing up to the Chinese Communist Party.
Which makes this new search engine thing
so much more disappointing.
And now the question on my mind is,
if Google does get back into the Chinese market,
and is desperate to make money there,
what happens if someday the Chinese Communist Party
decides it doesn’t like how Google operates outside China?
Like they do with, I don’t know,
international airlines that call Taiwan a country.
To get into the Chinese market,
would Google be more evil outside China, too?
As someone who hosts the world’s
most important English-language satirical news show
about China on YouTube,
which is owned by Google,
I’m a little bit concerned.
When you have a moment, try this.
Do a search for China Uncensored.
“China uncensorship pollution”!?
That’s a funny autocomplete!
Oddly enough, our newer, much smaller podcast,
China Unscripted, does come up.
We’ve also had fans of the show tell us
that they’ve stopped seeing China Uncensored
in recommended videos.
That they get no notification of new episodes,
even when they have the notification bell turned on.
We’re constantly having videos get demonetized.
And get this:
Some viewers have told me they were suddenly
unsubscribed from China Uncensored.
That even happened to Shelley,
who you know,
is on the show.
And I’m sure all of these problems will get much better
once Google has serious financial stakes in China.
There’s no evidence that Google
is intentionally targeting China Uncensored.
It could just be that Google is inept.
And that is completely possible.
You see, China is no less totalitarian than it was back in 2010,
when Google initially pulled out.
In fact, they are increasingly using online surveillance
to control Chinese people.
But even if Google doesn’t care about being evil anymore—
even if all they care about is making money for their shareholders,
or if they’re just drooling over the idea of getting a piece of
750 million internet users—
going in to China is a bad idea.
Having a Chinese partner company
may help Google make more money,
but there’s definitely a price to pay.
And it might be higher than they think.
Which is why Google should really change their motto to:
Don’t be stupid.
What do you think about Google’s re-entry into China?
What should their new motto be?
Leave your comments below.
And now, it’s time to answer questions from fans
who support the show on the crowd funding website Patreon.
Alfred Schneider aks,
“Chris, I've heard that PRC have built
some delightful vacation resorts
in the South China Sea.
Which one would you like to visit the most, and why?”
Oh Alfred, that is probably the toughest question
I’ve been asked so far.
There are so many; how can I choose?
Yes, the Chinese Communist Party is developing
a booming tourism industry in the South China Sea.
Particularly in disputed territories.
I mean, my favorite Chinese state-run media the Global Times
makes a vacation there sound so appealing.
Look at that beachfront view.
“Since 2013, around 10,000 Chinese tourists have been able
to enjoy the natural beauty of the Xisha Islands.”
Otherwise known as the Paracel Islands,
territory claimed by China, Vietnam, and Taiwan.
The best part about vacationing in these wonderful resorts
is probably the flybys from Chinese nuclear capable bombers.
Now if that doesn’t sound like a vacation,
I don’t know what does.
Just like the tourists in this Global Times article,
I too would love to travel to the Xisha-slash-Paracel Islands
on the Coconut-fragrance Princess,
watch a flag-raising ceremony
as the Chinese National Anthem is played over the water,
and talk about never giving up an inch
of China’s territorial integrity.
Thanks for your question Alfred.
And before we wrap up,
this is a good time to make a plug for your support.
This show is funded mainly not through Google ads,
but through contributions from viewers.
You can contribute a dollar or more per episode
through the crowdfunding website Patreon.
You’ll get cool rewards,
including a chance to have your questions for me
answered here on the show.
And even if you can’t support China Uncensored on Patreon,
you can make a huge difference by just
sharing the show with your friends and family.
Since Google is going to make that as hard as possible.
Thanks for watching this episode of China Uncensored.
Once again I’m your host Chris Chappell.
See you next time.
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