Google Is Actively Trying to Enter the Chinese Market

Rumor has it that Google is attempting to re-enter the large Chinese market through a project titled “Dragonfly.” Eight years ago, Google withdrew from China due to strict internet content censorship. Today, it seems they’ve changed their mind. Google engineers are currently working on creating a censored search engine that would adapt to China’s content restrictions.

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Google has already presented their plans to the Chinese government. However, there is still no official confirmation on whether Google will return to China.

What is clear now is that they are working on a search engine. This engine should be capable of filtering websites and censoring specific terms and keywords, as requested by the Chinese government. In a nutshell, Google is trying to tailor their services to meet the same censorship requirements due to which they left the Chinese market years ago. This has led to some mixed opinions among their users and employees as well.

What Google CEO Had To Say About This

At the recent Wired conference held in San Francisco, Google CEO Sundar Pichai shared more information on the subject. However, his speech only added to the controversy of the whole project. Pichai confirmed that the Dragonfly project does exist and that the company is looking into returning to the Chinese market. His main argument was the fact that Google could provide better information than the data already available in China, serving over 99% of their search queries.

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Other than that, Google CEO did not officially confirm any future plans. He even added that there’s no official decision to launch the censored app any time soon. “It's very early, we don't know whether we would or could do this in China but we felt like it was important for us to explore. I think it's important for us given how important the market is and how many users there are,” Pichai added.

However, this is where things get interesting. The company CEO’s statement contradicts the recently leaked transcript of a meeting by Ben Gomes, which took place in July. During the meeting, the company’s search chief Gomes said that Google was indeed planning to launch the controversial app as soon as possible.

Google’s Employees Against the Dragonfly Project

Many people were not happy about Google’s intent to re-enter the Chinese market, though. Pichai didn’t expect the project to cause internal chaos in the company. However, many Google employees began expressing their dissatisfaction with the plans. While some were concerned that the company would have to block many major websites including Facebook and Twitter, others saw the Dragonfly project as a direct attack on internet freedom. Some of Google employees rejected to work on the project, demanding to be given other tasks, while others even left the company.

There’s no doubt that Google employees were shocked by the fact that the company was ready to violate its own previous statements for the profits a large market such as the Chinese one would bring them. However, despite their obvious dissatisfaction, many employees still refused to publicly explain their reasons and opinions. Around 1400 people signed a letter to Google as a way of protesting against the controversial application.

The Chinese Internet Policies

China has been already censoring the internet for a while. But their internet policies have been tightened ever since President Xi Jinping came to power. Their strict internet policies require companies and personal blogs to meet specific censorship requirements. The Chinese government takes this matter seriously, as they actively research the internet to find out if anyone is violating the law.

Using their national internet regulator, the Chinese government has shut down over 300 sites in the first half of 2018. And the number keeps growing. They are very strict when it comes to censoring specific words, including Nobel prize, human rights, or student protest. Besides blocking Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, The New York Times, and similar sites, the Chinese government doesn’t hesitate to remove any resources or messages that contain forbidden keywords.

While this extreme internet censorship system makes it difficult for citizens to organize protests against the government, it also makes it difficult for people to access specific information they might need. After all, Chinese internet users can never be 100% certain whether their message is going to be censored. Their younger generations are growing without knowing what is Google or what is VPN (an app used to bypass censorship or for free internet access).

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Conclusion

It seems like Google is pretty serious about their decision to jump back into the Chinese market. However, there's still no official confirmation of whether the project is going to be made public. What is positive now is that the Dragonfly project does exist and Google’s plans to launch a censored search engine can hardly remain a secret.