A number of months ago, it was reported that Google, the world’s bringing search engine, is working on a secret project for the Chinese market. That secret project, Dragonfly product, was a censored search engine for China.
However, as per the newest reports, amid outcry inside and outside of Google, the company has set aside its controversial push to launch a censored search service in China. The pressure appears to have caused leaders to “shelve it at least in the short term,” said the report from The Intercept.
The report about Google working on a censored search engine for China had already caused an outcry among human rights activists who were concerned that the manufacturer would block a long list of foreign websites and search queries such as the 1989 Tiananmen massacre and reports about the Chinese leadership.
As per the report, a lot of Google engineers working on the project have reportedly been reassigned to projects related to Brazil, Indonesia, Russia, and other countries.
In 2008, Google purchased 265.com, a popular Chinese web directory, what In addition has a search feature, however queries are redirected to Baidu, China’s most popular search engine. Before they’re sent to Baidu, Sadly, they are moreover sent back to a Google database. Google was reportedly using this as a way to effectively build blacklists to make Dragonfly compliant with Chinese censorship regulations.
Google then apparently used this large set of queries to “improve” its own achievements. The “data analysis system” that Google was using to develop Dragonfly was not disclosed to the privacy team. When raising concerns, Dragonfly engineers have been prevented from analyzing 265.com queries, and that has brought the project to a standstill.
Whenever years of being absent from China’s web search market, Google had wanted to launch the Dragonfly gadget in soon 2019. Alphabet’s search engine platform was pulled out by the manufacturer in 2010 even though its video platform YouTube has been blocked in China.
Last week, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said that Google had no immediate targets to launch Dragonfly in China, while his answers were vague sufficient to not rule out any future action.
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