In fairness, people have been asking Apple and Google (plus many other western businesses) to pull out of China for a long time. The point your making isn't something new nor overlooked.
But Google did pull out of China, did that improve the situation in China? Meanwhile Apple makes billions in China and barely anyone says anything. If you're Google you're looking at that like a raw deal.
Yes Google pulling out instead of censoring search results and spying on users for the government made things better for people in China.
Apple scan your photos. Tells you what apps you are allowed to install and charges you extra for all of that. Whatever type of person is left on the platform is more likely to be going through stockholm syndrome and wouldn't be in a situation to make a political statement.
Every cloud service that holds your photos in a non-e2ee way (read: Google, FB, et. Al.) scans your photos. They’re all afraid of the .gov accusing them of holding illegal content.
I can relate to that, for sure. I also dislike the idea of having my personal property used to spy on me. The battery impact, the potentially degraded performance, and the overall creep factor. I dislike it all.
However, that was not what the parent stated. They said "Apple scan your photos.", to which I replied everyone else does as well. Because they do.
> Yes Google pulling out instead of censoring search results and spying on users for the government made things better for people in China.
Did it? In what way? Does Google not censor results in the United States at the behest of the US government? Does it not spy on users at the best of the US govt?
Does Google censor in the US the same way they were required to in China? No.
Google censor based on court rulings, user requests from Europe, national security certicates. Google follows the law where it operates which is why they stopped in China.
Google doesn't spy on behalf the government. The government monitors all traffic via under the sea cables and at all major backbone datacenters. The cellphone location beacon you carry around does.
Page and Brinn started Google with the intention to improve the world. They weren't short of money, so not being part of what China was doing was productive, even if it did not make cash.
I know plenty of people that are driven by things other than money, and its not a raw deal at all.
Of course, after that, Google went Evil Incarnate so now there is no logic for them to be out of China.
Google didn't entirely pull out of China, they just terminated their product lines that were unsuccessful in China.
I was also just posting a fact that people have made the same calls for China, not my personal opinion about whether we "should" discontinue services with China. On that last point, I'm honestly undecided.
They did still redirect people to the Hong Kong search though. They didn't entirely pull out from China, just discontinued the Chinese search engine. And they did that because Google.cn was largely a broken service with a significant number of results being blocked by the Great Firewall. That wiki literally states all of this!
Google Search was never really what one would normally describe as a "successful product" in China even when it was at it's hight in terms of market share. It sucked and given Google still operate in China, have development offices there and actively promote Android (amongst other services), it's a real stretch to say that Google discontinued Search in China over ethical reasons. Search was just, like many of their services in the west that get canned, just not proving successful enough to be worth the hassle supporting. Which was my original point.
edit: Christ on a bike. I'm getting downvoted when even the citations backs up my statement. Googlers must have logged on for their morning dose of internet outrage.
