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by chivas 2662 days ago
Why do you think censored search engine is bad? All other search engine in China have same censorship but worse quality. Why it's bad to have another censored search engine with higher quality?

Or do you want to say you can't have better search engine until the whole censorship is overhauled? If that's the case, why not first stop use oil from Middle East until the war is complete ended there?

2 comments

The argument is that Google shouldn't build a censored search engine for one authoritarian state, because once it's built, it's easier for other states to ask for the same treatment. China's existing censored search engines are confined to that country, and I would also oppose any adoption of those services in the US.

(As a side note: Is it wrong of me to be suspicious of comments on HN that are enthusiastically pro-China because they have English grammar errors in every sentence? Maybe, but I'm going to do that anyway.)

> Is it wrong of me to be suspicious of comments on HN that are enthusiastically pro-China because they have English grammar errors in every sentence? Maybe, but I'm going to do that anyway.

I think it's wrong of you to label someone as "enthusiastically pro-China" for thinking that having access to a censored version of Google would improve the state of the Chinese search engine market (without using VPNs, anyway). That's more of an anti-China position.

If you ignore comments by Chinese people on China (presumably because you suspect them of being government shills?) you're just discounting the opinion of those with actual first-hand experience and an incentive to see things improve.

It's also worth considering that besides this thread, the only other post from that account was "Wow, GTA V IRL.". I think it's reasonable to be suspicious of the veracity of the account.
>Why it's bad to have another censored search engine with higher quality?

Again, this isn't exactly my personal opinion but the obvious difference is this is one of the US's largest tech companies participating, not some Chinese company that US citizens are not familiar with.

>why not first stop use oil from Middle East until the war is complete ended there

Google employees have the power to protest Google projects, not big oil projects.