US senators quiz Google about Chinese search engine plans

A bipartisan group of six US Senators, including Florida Republican Marco Rubio, have written to Google chief executive Sundar Pichai asking about the tech giant's reported plan to create a censored Chinese version of its search engine.

Seeking details about a reported plan to develop a censored Chinese version of the company’s search engine, the letter says the unconfirmed project is “deeply troubling and risks making Google complicit in human rights abuses” in China.

"What has changed since 2010 to make Google comfortable cooperating with the rigorous censorship regime in China?" asked the senators (See: Google threatens to exit China after cyber attacks). 

The Intercept first reported on Google’s Chinese search project last week. According to the report, the tool takes the form of an Android app, and has already been demonstrated to the Chinese government.

The project, reportedly codenamed “Dragonfly,” would be a profound reversal for the company, which in 2010 refused to comply with Chinese government censorship requirements on ethical grounds, and essentially abandoned the market.

Google has not officially confirmed or denied the project’s existence, though The Intercept‘s report was based on internal documents, and multiple subsequent media reports suggest employees have also seen the app firsthand.

The senators’ letter seeks clarity about the project’s existence, and details about its operation. The letter also functions as a laundry list of reasons Google’s possible involvement in such an effort is so disturbing.

Most pointedly, the letter focuses on Google’s recent technology-sharing agreement with Chinese tech giant Tencent, its first such agreement in China. The senators ask whether the agreement was “connected in any way with [Google’s] efforts to enter the Chinese market via the custom search app”.

Google is clearly broadening its push for a presence in China — this weekend, reports claimed it is considering offering cloud services such as Docs and Drive through Chinese partners.

According to The Information, the company is also developing a news-aggregation app for use in China that will comply with the country's censorship laws.

The senators’ letter also asked "which 'blacklist' of censored searches and websites" Google would use in a Chinese search product.

The state-owned China Securities Daily, however, last week refuted the report that Google is building a search engine for China.

The senators’ letter emphasizes widespread claims that Tencent and other Chinese tech giants are closely tied to the Chinese government. Those relationships raise the possibility that Google technology could either be stolen outright or more subtly used to create products that obscure Google’s involvement to insulate the company from reputational damage in the US.

China is home to 772 million Internet users - the biggest online community in the world. Google, which has hundreds of people working in China, has launched its Artificial Intelligence lab in the country.

Chinese internet censorship is active and far-reaching, both blocking thousands of specific websites, and certain discussion topics on social media. Broadly, the goal of the ‘Great Firewall’ is to suppress dissent against the Chinese Communist Party, and prohibited topics include information about domestic scandals, as well as pro-democracy movements and criticism of authoritarian regimes in general.