A report from last month revealed that Google could be planning to return to China with a new search engine that would basically comply with the country’s censorship policies. Now it seems that US lawmakers are curious as to what Google plans to do should they return to China, and whether or not they will comply with China’s policies.
According to a report from Reuters, it seems that a bipartisan group of 16 US lawmakers want to question Alphabet (Google’s parent company) about their China plans. They want to know if Google will be able to protect the safety of their users if China were to allow them to operate in the country, which would no doubt come with certain conditions.
However Google had previously stated that they are “not close” to launching in China, but don’t deny that this is an area that they have been exploring for a while now, although it isn’t necessarily confirmation that they will go through with it. It’s not surprising that Google would love to tap into the Chinese market, given the sheer number of users that they basically ceding to the competition.
At the same time China’s censorship laws have caused many controversies in the past, and last we heard Google’s employees weren’t too thrilled about the company’s plans and have protested against it internally.