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Tag: Project Dragonfly

  • Former Exec Says Google Pushed Him Out Over Human Rights

    Former Exec Says Google Pushed Him Out Over Human Rights

    Ross LaJeunesse, a top executive at Google, was the face of the company’s human rights efforts. In an interview with The Washington Post, he says he was eventually forced out because of it.

    When Google announced in 2010 that it would no longer censor search results for China, LaJeunesse was put in charge of the company’s human rights efforts for China. It was his job to come up with a plan to protect human rights in the country. LaJeunesse “later devised a human rights program to formalize Google’s principles supporting free expression and privacy. He began lobbying for it internally in 2017 — around the time when the tech giant was exploring a return to China, in a stark reversal of its 2010 move that made its search engine unavailable there.”

    Ultimately, it seems that China was too big and lucrative of a market for Google to ignore indefinitely—even if that meant compromising its principles. In 2018, it was reported the company was working on Project Dragonfly, a censored search app for the Chinese market. After protest from employees, Google finally scrapped the plan.

    LaJeunesse sounded warnings about Project Dragonfly internally, warnings which seemed to go unheeded. He became increasingly convinced that Google needed to formally adopt a human rights policy that could guide company decisions regardless of whether he or his deputies were present.

    Eventually, LaJeunesse was informed his role was being terminated and he was offered another one that seemed too much like a demotion. He chose to leave the company without signing an NDA so he could shed light on the changes occurring within Google.

    Speaking about the company’s former mission statement, “Don’t be evil,” LaJeunesse told The Washington Post: “I didn’t change. Google changed. Now when I think about ‘Don’t be evil,’ it’s been relegated to a footnote in the company’s statements.”

    It was reported earlier this week that company veterans felt Google had become ‘unrecognizable’ due to some of the very same issues LaJeunesse had. The Washington Post interview is a fascinating read that continues to flesh out that narrative and showcases what happens when a company seems to prioritize profit over principles.

  • Google ‘Unrecognizable’ To Company Veterans

    Google ‘Unrecognizable’ To Company Veterans

    Google has undergone a number of major changes over the years, not the least of which is the two founders stepping down from their roles. Many of those changes have caused the company to be virtually “unrecognizable” to many Google veterans, according to CNBC.

    For many workers who spoke with CNBC, 2018 was a pivotal year that showed how much things had changed. Project Dragonfly became public knowledge, exposing Google’s attempt to build a censored search engine for China. In a company that had long treasured a reputation for open communication with its employees, the project had been kept on a need-to-know basis.

    Despite ending the project when employees expressed concern about the ethics of it, for many the damage had already been done.

    “There’s no way a few years before, they would have had a secret project with these kinds of ethical concerns,” Raph Levien, a former level 6 engineer who left Google after 11 years, told CNBC. “It crossed the line and felt misleading. It definitely felt like this was Google changing.”

    Another factor that has hurt the company’s reputation internally is how it has handled sexual abuse allegations, paying executives millions in severance packages despite allegations. The size of the company has also played a role, as it is much harder for a company of “more than 100,000 workers, many of whom are contractors instead of full-time employees,” to maintain the culture it started with.

    One thing is clear, based on CNBC’s report: For a company that is already in the spotlight for privacy issues and antitrust concerns, an internal breakdown of the very culture that made Google what it is, is the last thing the company needs.