Sundar Pichai: Google has no plans for Chinese search engine now

Google CEO Sundar Pichai told the House Judiciary Committee that Google currently has no plans to return to the Chinese market.

With this, the CEO left open the option that Google will again be active with a search engine in China in the future. In 2010, Google withdrew from China due to Beijing’s censorship of its results. At the time, Google said that Internet attacks from China on activists who used GMail also played a role in that decision.

During his congressional testimony, Pichai was asked what has changed since then and whether Google’s core values ​​have changed as the company considers returning to China. Noting that there are currently no plans to do so, Pichai said the company is always looking at how it can provide information to users and that if any steps are taken to become active in China, they will be transparent. China is a potentially lucrative market for Google, with more than 800 million internet users.

Pichai previously told his staff that there were no concrete plans to release a search engine in China, but internally Google is working on a censored search service called Project Dragonfly. That project sparked strong criticism from Google employees, who pointed to its potential use for state surveillance and demanded that development be halted. During the testimony, one of the onlookers present held a plate up with the Google logo combined with the flag of China.

Pichai went on to admit that YouTube can do more to curb the spread of conspiracy theories. Like many other social media platforms, YouTube serves as an outlet for many individuals who spread and succeed in spreading fake news and lies. “We are constantly taking steps to deal with misinformation,” Pichai said. “We have clear policies and we have made great progress in many areas, such as terrorism, child protection, and so on.”