Google’s Controversial Chinese Search Project Shut Down

It was revealed a few months ago that Google was working on a secretive project for the Chinese market which would essentially have been a censored version of a search engine for the Chinese market. There was a lot of backlash, understandably, with even employees calling on the company to shelve the project. Google has now shut down its controversial “Dragonfly” Chinese search project.

Google’s vice president of public policy Karan Bhatia said during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing this week that work on the company’s censored search engine for China has been “terminated.” A spokesperson for the company later added that there are no plans at Google to launch Search in the People’s Republic and that there’s no work that’s currently being done on such a project.

The company wasn’t really forthcoming with all of the details about Dragonfly. The leaked documents had revealed that this search app would only be for China and it would remove websites that were blocked by China from search results. Google eventually confirmed it was working on a project called Dragonfly but didn’t provide specifics.

It’s still unclear why Google has decided to stop work on this project. Whether it was due to the criticism from employees or because of some other issues, the company isn’t saying much about why it has chosen to no longer proceed with Project Dragonfly.

Adnan Farooqui
Categories: Web
Tags: Google