Google has reportedly ended its Search Engine Project for China
By MYBRANDBOOK
The global Tech player Google has been forced to shut down its Dragonfly Project after an internal confrontation over data privacy. It was using to develop a censored search engine for China after members of the company’s privacy team raised internal complaints that it had been kept secret from them according to a new report by The Intercept.
Dragonfly has been one of Google's most controversial projects, and it comes eight years after Google exited the search engine market in China. At the time of its departure, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who grew up in the Soviet Union, cited the "totalitarianism" of Chinese policies as a contributing factor.
Last month, hundreds of Google employees, mostly software engineers, joined with Amnesty International to publish a letter demanding that CEO Sundar Pichai cancel the project. Google has said little about Dragonfly, but the project would reportedly bring a censored search engine to China and make it possible to connect users' search queries to their phone numbers, enabling the Chinese government to more easily track searches.
Asked for comment on Monday about The Intercept report, a Google spokeswoman pointed to remarks Pichai made last week when asked about Dragonfly during a congressional hearing. He repeatedly said the company has "no plans" to launch a search engine in China. But when pressed, he acknowledged that the project had "over a hundred" people working on it at one point. Despite the headcount, Pichai called it a "limited effort" within the company.
The Beijing-based website, 265.com, is a Chinese-language web directory service that claims to be “China’s most used homepage.” Google purchased the site in 2008 from Cai Wensheng, a billionaire Chinese entrepreneur. 265.com provides its Chinese visitors with news updates, information about financial markets, horoscopes, and advertisements for cheap flights and hotels. It also has a function that allows people to search for websites, images, and videos.
However, search queries entered on 265.com are redirected to Baidu, the most popular search engine in China and Google’s main competitor in the country. As The Intercept reported in August, it appears that Google has used 265.com as a honeypot for market research, storing information about Chinese users’ searches before sending them along to Baidu.
“The 265 data was integral to Dragonfly,” said one source. “Access to the data has been suspended now, which has stopped progress.”
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