It’s not just about having a search engine that’s fast and convenient albeit “censored.”
It’s very plausible that Dragonfly will be used to feed people in China flat out misinformation and lies, and then monitor them 24/7.
News that doesn’t toe the party line will literally be deleted. Try and search for a controversial book or subject, and you’ll be placed on a watchlist. Fake news and government created media will be the first and only result always. In other words, the Chinese government will have more access than ever into the minds of its people, and then it will try to either manipulate them or just repress the problematic ones.
This will happen whether Baidu or Google does it, but that doesn’t make it morally acceptable for Google to join in. We don’t get a free pass to do evil just because we’re not the first.
In fact, it’s worse for Google than Baidu. The people at Baidu don’t have a choice, it’s the country they were born in. But Google is one of the world’s richest companies, and if they chose not to operate in China, it would just maintain the status quo, not actively hurt them.
There’s no moral justification for this, even if now the search engine is faster and more polished.
For work reasons I had to use chinese web, and believe me, the later is much worse for a westerner.
Minimal i18n, confusing visual design, payments that dont go throught, random network errors, total reliance on you having a mobile phone.
Yes, censhorship is bad, but I rather use censored service from a western company than a censored service from a chinese company.