Google gets flak for censor-friendly search engine
The company has received backlash in the past for providing a limited search engine that adheres to the Chinese government’s censorship rules. Will this time be different?
Google desperately wants access to the enormous Chinese market.
The organization hasn’t offered a search engine there since 2010, when public outcry forced Google to remove the limited engine it was running in China that helped block information the government wanted kept away from citizens’ eyes. Now Google is trying to re-enter the Chinese market, but its plans have been leaked and the company is again on the defensive.
The project—code-named Dragonfly—has been underway since spring of last year, and accelerated following a December 2017 meeting between Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai and a top Chinese government official, according to internal Google documents and people familiar with the plans.
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