San Francisco: A top-notch former executive has blasted Google over its handling of human rights at its offices, alleging that he was sidelined when raised questions over the tech giant’s search engine project called “Dragonfly” for the China market.
Ross LaJeunesse, now a Democratic candidate for US Senate in Maine who worked as Google’s Head of International Relations, wrote on Medium that no longer can massive tech companies like Google be permitted to operate relatively free from government oversight.
“The company’s motto used to be aDon’t be evil.’ Dragonfly was only one of several developments that concerned those of us who still believed in the mantra of ‘Don’t be evil’. I was also concerned that Cloud executives were actively pursuing deals with the Saudi government, given its horrible record of human rights abuses,” LaJeunesse said in the post on Thursday.
In December 2017, Google announced the establishment of the Google Center for Artificial Intelligence in Beijing.
“A colleague was suddenly re-assigned to lead the policy team discussions for Dragonfly. As someone who consistently advocated for a human rights-based approach, I was being sidelined from the on-going conversations on whether to launch Dragonfly,” the Google executive added. (IANS)
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