Google admits it has a “Project Dragonfly.” Whether its end goal is to get the company’s signature product back into China is less certain.
At a Senate Commerce Committee hearing on data privacy Wednesday, Republican lawmakers pressed Keith Enright, Google’s chief privacy officer, on reports that the code-named initiative was part of an effort to launch a censored search engine in the communist nation. The platform reportedly tracks users’ locations, phone numbers, and other personal information that could be shared with the Chinese government.
Enright, who confirmed that a “Project Dragonfly” exists, nonetheless maintained that Google isn’t close to launching a search engine in China. If such a project were in the final stages of development, he said, the privacy team would be looped into the discussions.
“We have an array of internal projects, and I wouldn’t think that it was necessarily appropriate for a privacy conversation to speculate as to what we might be looking at in terms of a product launch in some parts of the world,” Enright told the panel. “I am not clear on the contours of what is in scope or out of scope of that project.”
Google shut down its search engine in China in 2010 after the company discovered that it was subject to a massive cyberattack from within the country. An investigation revealed that emails of Chinese human-rights activists had been targeted.
With a population of nearly 1.4 billion, China still remains an attractive market for companies like Google. But the latest reports of a possible reentry into the country — and the potential that the firm could cave to Beijing’s demand around censorship — come at a critical time for the tech giant.
President Trump is said to be pursuing a plan that would potentially break-up large companies like Google and Facebook, and a top Senate lawmaker is urging the Department of Justice to reopen an antitrust investigation. Conservatives, meanwhile, are livid over allegations that Google is suppressing Republican-linked articles and websites in its search results, a claim the company denies.
Those concerns are expected to come up during a meeting on Friday between top GOP lawmakers and Google Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai.
