Google Cancels Plans to Launch Censored Search Engine in China

By Hugh M Casey / June 30, 2019;

Photo: Getty image

Google has announced that they have “no plans to offer a search engine in China”. Sinchar Pichai, Google’s CEO, made the announcement at the AGM of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, in San Francisco. The project, codenamed Dragonfly, was designed for China as a censored version of the tech giant’s search engine.

A broad coalition of pro-Tibet campaigners and human rights groups have welcomed the news as a victory for human rights. Groups including Free Tibet, Students for a Free Tibet, International Tibet Network, Tibet Society, World Uyghur Congress, and SumOfUs partnered with digital technology experts to pressure Google to reconsider the project. Over the last ten months campaigners have opposed the plans through a series of global actions including demonstrations outside Google’s offices in a number of countries.

The intention for Dragonfly was to automatically identify and filter websites blocked by China’s “Great Firewall”. Blacklisted searches which would include “Tianamen Square massacre”, “Dalai Lama”, “free Tibet”, “human rights” and “democracy” would produce empty results or potentially misleading information. Another condition for operating the search engine would be compliance with Chinese demands for users’ search history to be made available to the government: this would jeopardise their safety according to campaigners.

After growing pressure from Tibetan, Chinese and Uyghur rights activists, Google cancels the plan
Photo: unpo

Sonam Tso, Campaigns and Communications Director for Students for a Free Tibet, spoke at a meeting of Google shareholders. She said, “I come from a country where people are imprisoned for using search terms that the Chinese government doesn’t like and considers ‘sensitive’. These human rights violations are real and Google must not be complicit. […] Google’s willingness to collude with the government of China sets an extremely dangerous precedent for Internet freedom around the world.”
Mandie Mckeown from International Tibet Network said, “We have been bolstered to see what we can achieve when we work together, but we will remain vigilant [so] that Google does not renege on this position in the future […] and not bend to China’s influence.”

Peter Irwin, World Uyghur Congress Programme Manager, said, “Widespread rights abuses continue to be facilitated by technology companies with no qualms working directly in support of mass surveillance, artificial intelligence and other programmes designed to monitor and control the Chinese domestic population. It is incumbent upon the international business community to live up to clear human rights standards to actively avoid complicity in abuses.”

Concerned Google employees shared confidential documents with The Intercept, an American news organisation, who initially revealed Dragonfly’s existence in August 2018. Many Google employees have resisted Dragonfly and there were some high-profile resignations in protest at the company’s direction.

In 2010 Google withdrew from China because of censorship regulations. However, amidst the widespread concerns over Dragonfly, the former CEO Eric Schmidt spoke to the BBC in May saying that he had advocated for Google to remain in China because he believed it is “better to stay in China and help change China to be more open”. He also said that there are “many, many benefits to interacting with China”.