Do you really think Google stepping in would prevent them from selling ads to unlicensed hospitals, etc.? If anything, this represents Google’s willingness to violate the moral standards of their own employees (I’m talking about the majority, and leadership prior to being corrupted by greed) no matter what, so long as it means growing their revenue/profit.
It was clearly demonstrated that all Google cares about is money, when they canceled project Maven immediately after protest, yet refuse to back down on Dragonfly. The only difference? Dragonfly promises to be immensely profitable, whereas Maven was small enough that the employees lost over it was assessed to cost more than the project’s profit.
So you really think that Google would then suddenly develop the moral fortitude, out of thin air, to reject bad ads in China that are nonetheless profitable? Even if their policy is to do so now, don’t expect that to stay — remember, their policy used to be ’we will not be complicit in censorship, because it is morally wrong, period.’
And even if it did, many would argue that it’s still a bad idea to seek a short term good at the expense of the long term. Enabling state censorship by giving the state more advanced censorship tech, could be seen as akin to enabling a heroin addict by giving them more heroin. Sure, they’ll feel good and they won’t suffer withdrawal. But overall it’s going to lead to a very dark place that ultimately yields extreme suffering and often even death.
P.S. In fact, here is evidence that Google does absolutely nothing about fraudulent directory listings and ads, like the one you seek to think will be solved by Google moving into China: https://youtu.be/5c6AADI7Pb4
It was clearly demonstrated that all Google cares about is money, when they canceled project Maven immediately after protest, yet refuse to back down on Dragonfly. The only difference? Dragonfly promises to be immensely profitable, whereas Maven was small enough that the employees lost over it was assessed to cost more than the project’s profit.
So you really think that Google would then suddenly develop the moral fortitude, out of thin air, to reject bad ads in China that are nonetheless profitable? Even if their policy is to do so now, don’t expect that to stay — remember, their policy used to be ’we will not be complicit in censorship, because it is morally wrong, period.’
And even if it did, many would argue that it’s still a bad idea to seek a short term good at the expense of the long term. Enabling state censorship by giving the state more advanced censorship tech, could be seen as akin to enabling a heroin addict by giving them more heroin. Sure, they’ll feel good and they won’t suffer withdrawal. But overall it’s going to lead to a very dark place that ultimately yields extreme suffering and often even death.