Developing Dragonfly, Google Wants To Win The Chinese Government’s Heart But Accidentally Loses Its Employees’ Faith

On Tuesday, Google received an open letter from over 200 employees regarding that the company was developing a censored search engine in the Project Dragonfly for the largest consumer market in the world – China. They included managers, engineers, and designers working at Google of Alphabet Inc.

We’re talking about the search engine under test called Project Dragonfly. Since the public heard it for the first time on August, Google has got a lot of criticism from its own employees who were and are working for this tech giant, as well as activists for human rights and lawmakers in the US. All of them have thought that Google shouldn’t try to win Chinese government’s heart by developing such as censored Chinese search app.

The non-governmental organization Amnesty International who focused on human rights appealed to the public to protest against Google’s developing app. According to the human rights group, it would target Google employees on LinkedIn, and they should sign a petition and hold a protest before Google offices.

As a result of Google’s support towards the Chinese government’s policy via Project Dragonfly, the share price of Alphabet Inc. dropped to $1,052.28 (over Rs 73,000) with the drop percentage of 0.35%. Until now, the tech giant has still said nothing in the letter written by its workers.

China is the largest internet market in the world, and that’s why Google wants to gain a firm position in it. However, Google’s primary obstacles originating from the domestic internet services in China that make it unable to thrive as in other countries.

An unknown official who works at China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said to Reuters a few days ago that Google didn’t show any indication regarding adjusting its initial plans and the rollout of this search app in 2019 might be infeasible.

A banner writing 'Say no to Internet censorship-Google'

Approximately 1,400 Google employees required the company to attach particular importance to the ventures that may have ethical problems like Project Dragonfly. According to the revelations from 9 first people who signed on the open letter on Tuesday, the Chinese government has watched for its dissidents via search data provided by Google and tried to apply the laws of content restrictions to hide the truth.

Google’s reputation has been at risk when its employees, as well as users, are losing faith in it. Even several people call Google “a company willing to place its values over profits.” That can be easy to realize when Google, similar to many other tech companies, in only two years, has faced some protests from its employees.