Hundreds of Google employees have written to the company to protest against plans to build a censored version of its search engine for China and demand more transparency to understand the ethical consequences of their work.
In the letter, which was obtained by The New York Times, employees wrote that the project and Google’s apparent willingness to abide by China’s censorship requirements “raise urgent moral and ethical issues.”
“Currently we do not have the information required to make ethically-informed decisions about our work, our projects, and our employment,” they added.
The letter is circulating on Google’s internal communication systems and is signed by about 1,400 employees, according to three people familiar with the document, who were not authorised to speak publicly.
The internal activism presents another obstacle for Google’s potential return to China eight years after the company publicly withdrew from the country in protest at censorship and government hacking.
China has the world’s largest internet audience but has frustrated US tech giants with content restrictions or outright blockages of services including Facebook and Instagram.
Google’s interest in bringing search back to China came to the forefront earlier this month, when reports surfaced that the company was working on a search app that restricts content banned by Beijing.
(This story has not been edited by paigaam.in staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
