News from Google's censored Chinese search engine project, Dragonfly has regularly fled since the month of August, angering many employees of the company, especially after the response that has leaked from the top echelons has been essentially: yes, we could compromise the core values ​​of companies. A group of more than 170 employees is now united to solve the problem publicly with an article and a petition published on Medium in partnership with Amnesty International entitled "We are employees of Google, Google must abandon Dragonfly".

Small reminder: the news of a new Chinese search engine project called Dragonfly broke out on August 1st. L & # 39; interception reported that the developing application would exclude certain blacklisted topics and phrases from search results, as well as results from certain sources, including the BBC and Wikipedia. Subsequently, it was reported that an unnamed Chinese partner could selectively modify search result pages and that users would be tracked via a mandatory login ID and the user's home phone number. ;user.

Google's employees against Dragonfly said in their joint medium message: "Our opposition to Dragonfly does not concern China: we oppose technologies that help the powerful to oppress the vulnerable, wherever they are." In this case, they noted that Google's project comes as the Chinese government "openly expands its surveillance powers and its tools of population control", some of the main victims being Uyghurs (a Turkish demographic group), advocates for women's rights and students. The employees also pointed out the fact that they are disappointed by the company:

"Many of us have accepted a job at Google keeping in mind the values ​​of the company, including its previous position on Chinese censorship and surveillance, and understanding that Google was a company willing to put its values ​​above its profits.After a year of disappointment, including Project Maven, Dragonfly and Google's support for the attackers, we do not believe that this is the case. position. "

As mentioned by the Googlers, the company again opposed censorship in China. In 2010, Google withdrew from China and its co-founder, Sergey Brin, said that China's attempts to impose censorship had "the characteristics of totalitarianism". Apparently, Brin changed his thinking on the issue, because The Wall Street Journal reported a few months ago that at a meeting in August, he said that Chinese project management required a "certain set of compromises". What is not clear is whether society is ready to face the tradeoff of a potentially steep drop in staff morale.