OTOH, AMZN and MSFT have never even hesitated to accommodate the Chinese govt's demands. Which other companies do you think would be more ethically conscious than GOOG in these circumstances? (I don't work there.)
I think the moral of the story here is that it's better to sell out from day 1 than to be seen as a hypocrite.
Source? I was not aware there was any hesitation or even disagreement from Apple's side. Is there an Apple statement saying they disagree w/ Chinese government requests similar to the statements saying they disagree w/ US government requests? In their absence, is it safe to assume they agree since they have shown that when they disagree they make public statements?
As of July, these datacenters were nationalized [2], giving the Chinese government access to all Apple user data.
It took only two years to go from refusing the FBI request for one user to handing over the encryption keys to millions of users.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-apple-icloud-insigh...
[2] https://mashable.com/article/china-government-apple-icloud-d...
If you wanted to do software work for a company that didn't kowtow to Chinese government demands, chances are 99% of jobs are available to you. Does that mean they could if they would? Unknown, and since regimes change with frequency you can't rely on stated principles, only actions.