Technology

Google Employees Blast Company For Involvement In Dragonfly, The Censored Chinese Search Engine

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Google employees blasted their employer in an open letter for its part in creating a censored search engine in China, citing the company’s unofficial “Don’t be evil” motto.

“Google’s mission statement literally says, ‘Organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible.’ Censorship directly contradicts making information accessible. … It’s like Google capitulating to an oppressive organization. … First it was the military industrial complex, now it’s China,” an anonymous Google employee told BuzzFeed News.

Google employees called for more transparency, saying they only found out about the search engine through the media in early August. The censored search engine raises “urgent moral and ethical issues,” according to the employees.

“Currently we do not have the information required to make ethically-informed decisions about our work, our projects, and our employment,”states the open letter, which has about 1,000 signatures.

Another employee wasn’t afraid of going public on the subject. Allison Day, a program manager at Google, said the company’s unofficial motto, “Don’t be evil,” should be upheld.

“The ‘Don’t be Evil’ slogan or whatever is, you know … it’s not a farce, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that. But it is a giant corporation, and its bottom line is to make money,” Day told BuzzFeed News.

Notably, the Chinese government has yet to approve Google’s censored search engine called Dragonfly. Google left the country in 2006 and will need the government’s approval to return.

Google employees have a history of proactively opposing company decisions. They successfully lobbied the company to end its contract with the Pentagon. The company was set to help create an artificial intelligence program to be used in drone strikes, The Daily Caller News Foundation reported in early June.

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