Sundar Pichai, an alumnus of Indian Institute of Technology-Kharagpur has been the CEO of Google since 2015 and Google’s parent company Alphabet Inc. since December 2019. Being at the top of the executive board for a considerable amount of time, one would think that Google under an Indian-American CEO with strong Indian roots will somehow be empathetic to the cause of Indians and the millions of users it benefits from. But as it turns out, Pichai is the one who has been at the centre when Google is increasingly starting to toe China’s line.
The Xi Jinping regime is infamous for undertaking massive censorship drives which are aimed at culling anything that is anti-China. Joining them now in the censorship crusade is the global search-engine giant Google, as reports had emerged suggesting that YouTube- a Google-owned company was automatically deleting comments that contain certain Chinese phrases related to criticism of the country’s ruling Communist Party.
Google also deleted over 7 million negative reviews of TikTok from its Play Store to bring some parity to the Chinese app Tik-Tok. Yesterday, an app by the name “Remove Chinese Apps” was deleted from the Google Play Store after CCP’s global mouthpiece published a hitjob article condemning the increasing usage of the app by Indians to delete Chinese apps. Even a rival app of TikTok by the name ‘Mitron TV’ was also deleted by Google.
Add to it the $5 billion class-action lawsuit that has been initiated against Pichai’s Google for illegally invading the privacy of millions of users by extensively tracking their internet use through browsers set in “private incognito” mode.
Google’s ties with the CCP have long been under suspicion. The search engine was banned from China in 2010 but it has found a workaround-model to generate huge revenues from the communist country.
Who can forget the infamous search-engine it was developing for backdoor entry into China. ‘Project Dragonfly’ took shape under the guardianship of CEO Sundar Pichai. When the project came under the scanner from all quarters—including the company’s employees who regularly started questioning Google co-founder Sergey Brin and CEO Pichai, the project had to be ultimately scrapped, at least Google claims it to be. What happens behind the curtains of the Mountain View, California based company is difficult to predict.
Later in December 2018, Pichai had to appear in front of a Congressional Hearing where he was grilled on privacy, data collection, China, and the Project Dragonfly. Pichai gave vague answers about China and Google’s plan to expand there through a search-engine which brought a lot of heat to him and the credibility of the company.
A good question from Rep. Marino about why Google changed its mind on China since it pulled out of search there in 2010. "What has changed since 2010 and how [is] working with the Chinese government to censor results part of Google’s core values?"
— issie lapowsky (@issielapowsky) December 11, 2018
Donald Trump has also been particularly vocal about Google and its biasness and how it supports China and toes its line. He has regularly attacked Google for its pro-China views.
When TFI dug around on Google’s official help room chats, it found out that users have been complaining about Google pushing CCP’s propaganda pieces on their timelines to change their perception, all in a cohesive way. The articles and featurettes as one user pointed out are churned out on a daily basis despite the user having no prior interest in the topic.
While a Google platinum member tried to pin the whole incident on the algorithm of Google which tracks a person’s interests and serves them information based on it, the other chat room members vehemently disagreed and said that Google cannot hide behind the legal disclaimer of “Algorithms”.
Google has seen a huge upsurge in revenue from China, powered by a wave of Chinese tech companies buying ads outside China to promote products like TikTok and the Alipay mobile wallet. According to news reports, Google’s revenue in Greater China, which includes mainland China as well as Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan, grew by more than 60% to over $3 billion in 2018.
Big revenues coming from Mainland China is one of the reasons why Pichai led Google has been sucking-up to the Chinese.
But it is a slippery slope indeed, if the search giant is willing to play along with the tunes of China, other governments in Russia, Iran, Egypt or elsewhere will also try to bend Google according to its rules in the near future. They would also like to control the content and push their propaganda upon the world.
It is shocking how Sundar Pichai has toed a pro-China line and is acting at the behest of the Chinese Communist Party, despite being an Indian himself.
Google which was developed in the digital world as a tool of empowerment has now turned into a client of CCP and its vile motives. The results could be catastrophic if Google continues to pursue this untrodden territory.