Google is facing another public internal revolt from their employees, this time it’s over their Dragonfly platform, a censored version of its search engine to be marketed in China.
The employees have demanded that the Dragonfly project be brought to a halt as they believe it will “enable state surveillance.”
The letter states they the signatories are among thousands of employees who have spoken out over recent months, but they say that: “So far, our leadership’s response has been unsatisfactory.”
Dragonfly
In the letter they comment that their: “Opposition to Dragonfly is not about China: We object to technologies that aid the powerful in oppressing the vulnerable, wherever they may be.”
“Many of these rely on advanced technologies, and combine online activity, personal records, and mass monitoring to track and profile citizens.”
They say that many of them took positions in Google as they had seen Google previously take a different position on ‘Chinese censorship and surveillance.’
They write that that “Google is too powerful not to be held accountable. We deserve to know what we’re building and we deserve a say in these significant decisions.”
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Recently thousands of Google employees left their offices to protest company actions where it was discovered that they had paid millions in exit packages to male executives that were accused of sexual misconduct.
In an emailed statement to Computer Business Review a Google spokesperson comment on the recent letter regarding Dragonfly that: “We’ve been investing for many years to help Chinese users, from developing Android, through mobile apps such as Google Translate and Files Go, and our developer tools. But our work on search has been exploratory, and we are not close to launching a search product in China.”
