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One hundred employees of Google Google publicly asked the company Tuesday to abandon a search engine project in China that meets the censorship requirements imposed by Beijing to its Internet users.
The project is called "Dragonfly". Its existence was recognized in October by the executive director of Google, Sundar Pichai who justified it by saying that it was better to propose a powerful search engine with restrictions than to leave the Chinese with more deficient tools.
"Our opposition to Dragonfly has nothing to do with China" indicates a letter signed by 90 employees and urging his colleagues to join him. "We oppose technologies that help the powerful to oppress the most vulnerable around the world" he added.
"In China, Dragonfly would set a dangerous precedent at a time of political uncertainty, preventing Google from denying similar concessions to other countries," the letter added.
Several organizations also denounce the project, notably . ] Human Rights Watch Reporters Without Borders and Amnesty International, which launched an online petition calling for its abandonment.
"This is a turning point for Google," said Joe Westby, a researcher in the field of human rights and technology at Amnesty International, in an article published Tuesday on the website of l & # 39; organization.
"As the world's leading search engine, I should fight for an Internet where information is freely available to everyone instead of supporting the Chinese government's dubious alternative," he said. .
At a conference in San Francisco last month, Sundar Pichai said that Google should "think very seriously" on the Chinese market, despite criticisms of the possible complicity of the company with state censorship in China.
"We always take into account a series of values," he explained. "And we must also respect the law in force in each country," he added.
"It is that we could answer more than 99% of the searches (…) There are many cases in which we provide information of better quality. than what is currently available, "he added.
Google closed its search engine in China in 2010, after refusing to comply with Beijing's request to censor certain search results.
Twitter is blocked in China on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and the New York Times website, while the search engine of Microsoft, Bing, works
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