Google's Censored China Search Engine Halted After Internal Privacy Dispute
Google effectively ends its controversial Dragonfly censored search engine project for China after an internal confrontation over secret data collection practices. The shutdown marks a major setback for top executives who prioritize expanding into the Chinese market.
Google effectively shuts down its controversial censored search engine project for China, known as Dragonfly, after a major internal confrontation. The dispute erupts when members of Google's privacy team discover that the company secretly uses a data analysis system to develop the censorship tool without their knowledge.
The controversy centers on 265.com, a Beijing-based website that Google owns and uses to collect real Chinese internet search queries. Google uses this site as a honeypot for market research, storing information about what Chinese users search for before redirecting those queries to Baidu, which is Google's main competitor in the country.
This internal rift forces Google to reassign groups of engineers away from the project and dismantle the data analysis system. The decision delivers a significant blow to top Google executives, including CEO Sundar Pichai, who make the censored China search engine one of their main priorities over the past two years.