Rumor: Google has almost stopped development of Chinese search engine

Several Google development teams working on project Dragonfly, the company’s censored Chinese search engine, have been assigned to other projects after internal criticism within Google about the development. The Intercept claims that based on two sources.

Several development teams are now working on projects for India, Indonesia, Russia, the Middle East and Brazil rather than China, according to the site. The Intercept is the site that announced the existence of the Dragonfly project within Google in August. Project Dragonfly is said to have “effectively ended.”

The developers would also no longer have access to the data of the Chinese site 265.com. Google bought this popular site to use it, in the words of The Intercept, as a honeypot and to gain insight into the searches of Chinese people. The site redirects searches to the Chinese search engine Baidu, but Google was able to improve Dragonfly’s search analysis and compile a list of government-blocked sites.

“The 265 data was an integral part of Dragonfly. Access to the data is now blocked, stopping progress,” said one of the sources. The Dragonfly teams had access to the searches without the Google privacy teams knowing. That would have led to internal conflicts.

Stopping development would be a blow to CEO Sundar Pichai, in particular, who would have seen renewed access to the sizable Chinese market as a priority. The development of a Chinese search engine to comply with the rules in the country and provide opportunities for censorship was criticized within Google. Employees did not want their company to cooperate with state surveillance. Pichai stated several times that there were no concrete plans to introduce the search engine.