Google’s China search job gets stung by fight over information

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Google CEO Sundar Pichai stated recently the business has “no plans” to introduce a search item in China.


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Google’s Dragonfly job, an effort to bring a censored online search engine to China, supposedly took a significant blow after an internal fight over information personal privacy, according to a report Monday by The Intercept.

The personal privacy group at Google faced executives over information collected from265 com, a Beijing- based site that Google purchased in 2008, according to the report. The information permitted engineers to see what search inquiries from mainland China may appear like, so Google might enhance the precision of the search results page it may offer. The information permitted the business to develop a model search item, The Intercept stated.

But access to the information was closed down after Google’s personal privacy group grumbled that it was left in the dark about the265 com information.

Shutting down access to the information has “effectively ended” the Dragonfly job, according to TheIntercept

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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.

Rumors of the project alone have spurred protests and resignations. 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.

In an interview with The Washington Post after the hearing, Pichai offered even more about what the project could look like. “Can we explore and serve users in China, in areas like education and health care?” he said. “We may not end up doing search. We’re trying to understand a market.”

First published Dec. 17 at 11:17 a.m. PT.
Update, 11:54 a.m. PT.:  Adds response from Google. 

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