Comment on Apple is locking down the iPhone App Store to comply with a new law in China

• ReallyActuallyFrankenstein@lemmynsfw.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Google withdrew from China overall in 2010. They moved some portion to Hong Kong but stopped censoring search results.

  Project Dragonfly was an internal project that was dropped (“prototype” is the ninth word in the Wikipedia article you linked). Google has nibbled around the edges of reentering China since 2010 but hasn’t actually done so.

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  • ArbiterXero@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Google left China because they couldn’t comply with the government’s expectations.

    When they started building that prototype, they knew EXACTLY what the censorship requirements were and they didn’t give the slightest fuck. Why? Because money.

    Why build the prototype if they were taking a moral stand?

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    • ReallyActuallyFrankenstein@lemmynsfw.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I’m so confused by your logic. They didn’t release it. Sure, every company develops things, I’m sure because some VP thought they’d make money and get promoted. But you’re saying an internal prototype which has no business impact (because it was never released) outweighs them leaving the market and remaining out for 13 years which has a substantial business impact (because they forewent billions in opportunities) while giving no weight to the fact that their ultimate choice was to not release that prototype (again, foregoing billions in opportunities).

      It’s a chain of reasoning that is only possible if you’ve tautologically assumed they’re operating in bad faith, so that can’t be probative of if they’re operating in bad faith.

      I mean, I’m not even saying Google is good, I’m comparing them to Apple who is now agreeing to actively refuse to post apps that are not registered with the government. If you’re debating me to argue they’re equivalent, yikes.

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      • ArbiterXero@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Google also removes apps from the play store.

        Google developed it with the intention of releasing it, and willingly cooperating with the Chinese regime. While they didn’t end up going through with it, it wasn’t until the bad press in the USA pushed them to avoid releasing it. I think that’s fairly substantial proof that Google is more than willing to go along with the regime unless it directly hurts them.

        They didn’t forgo that much profit by leaving China because they were forced to leave China. Their current offerings in2010 were being pressed by Chinese authorities to do things and monitor/filter in ways that Google wasn’t capable of doing at the time. AI they spun it as “do no evil” when the reality is that they were being walked out by the Chinese anyways.

        Enter project dragonfly, aka “we still want that money and we don’t actually have a moral stand on this”

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