GOOGLE to Launch Censored Search Engine in China?
GOOGLE PLANS TO LAUNCH CENSORED SEARCH ENGINE IN CHINA,
LEAKED DOCUMENTS REVEAL
By Ryan Gallagher August 1 2018, 1:58 a.m.
GOOGLE IS PLANNING to launch a censored version of its
search engine in China that will blacklist websites and search terms about
human rights, democracy, religion, and peaceful protest, The Intercept can
reveal.
The project – code-named Dragonfly – has been underway
since spring of last year, and accelerated following a December 2017 meeting
between Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai and a top Chinese government official,
according to internal Google documents and people familiar with the plans.
Teams of programmers and engineers at Google have created
a custom Android app, different versions of which have been named “Maotai” and
“Longfei.” The app has already been demonstrated to the Chinese government; the
finalized version could be launched in the next six to nine months, pending
approval from Chinese officials.
The planned move represents a dramatic shift in Google’s
policy on China and will mark the first time in almost a decade that the
internet giant has operated its search engine in the country.
Google’s search service cannot currently be accessed by
most internet users in China because it is blocked by the country’s so-called
Great Firewall. The app Google is building for China will comply with the
country’s strict censorship laws, restricting access to content that Xi
Jinping’s Communist Party regime deems unfavorable.
The search app will “blacklist sensitive queries.”
The Chinese government blocks information on the internet
about political opponents, free speech, sex, news, and academic studies. It bans
websites about the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, for instance, and references
to “anticommunism” and “dissidents.” Mentions of books that negatively portray
authoritarian governments, like George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm, have been
prohibited on Weibo, a Chinese social media website. The country also censors
popular Western social media sites like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, as
well as American news organizations such as the New York Times and the Wall
Street Journal.
Documents seen by The Intercept, marked “Google
confidential,” say that Google’s Chinese search app will automatically identify
and filter websites blocked by the Great Firewall. When a person carries out a
search, banned websites will be removed from the first page of results, and a
disclaimer will be displayed stating that “some results may have been removed
due to statutory requirements.” Examples cited in the documents of websites
that will be subject to the censorship include those of British news
broadcaster BBC and the online encyclopedia Wikipedia.
The search app will also “blacklist sensitive queries” so
that “no results will be shown” at all when people enter certain words or
phrases, the documents state. The censorship will apply across the platform:
Google’s image search, automatic spell check and suggested search features will
incorporate the blacklists, meaning that they will not recommend people
information or photographs the government has banned.
Within Google, knowledge about Dragonfly has been
restricted to just a few hundred members of the internet giant’s 88,000-strong
workforce, said a source with knowledge of the project. The source spoke to The
Intercept on condition of anonymity, as they were not authorized to contact the
media. The source said that they had moral and ethical concerns about Google’s
role in the censorship, which is being planned by a handful of top executives
and managers at the company with no public scrutiny.
“I’m against large companies and governments
collaborating in the oppression of their people.”
“I’m against large companies and governments
collaborating in the oppression of their people, and feel like transparency
around what’s being done is in the public interest,” the source said, adding
that they feared “what is done in China will become a template for many other
nations.”
Patrick Poon, a Hong Kong-based researcher with human
rights group Amnesty International, told The Intercept that Google’s decision
to comply with the censorship would be “a big disaster for the information age.”
“This has very serious implications not just for China,
but for all of us, for freedom of information and internet freedom,” said Poon.
“It will set a terrible precedent for many other companies who are still trying
to do business in China while maintaining the principles of not succumbing to
China’s censorship. The biggest search engine in the world obeying the
censorship in China is a victory for the Chinese government – it sends a signal
that nobody will bother to challenge the censorship anymore.”
It is unclear whether Google will eventually launch a
desktop version of its censored China search platform. For now, the company is
focused on initially rolling out the Android app, which a large portion of
China’s population will be able to access. Researchers estimate that more than
95 percent of people accessing the internet in China use mobile devices to go
online, and Android is by far the most popular mobile operating system in the
country, with 80 percent of the market share.
The documents seen by The Intercept suggest that Google
will operate the search app as part of a “joint venture” with an unnamed
partner company, which will presumably be based in China. However, much of the
work on the Dragonfly project is being carried out at Google’s Mountain View
headquarters in California, about 14 miles northwest of San Jose, the heart of
Silicon Valley. Other teams participating in the project are based out of
Google offices in New York, San Francisco, Sunnyvale, Santa Barbara, Cambridge,
Washington, D.C., Shanghai, Beijing, and Tokyo.
PREVIOUSLY, BETWEEN 2006 and 2010, Google had maintained
a censored version of its search engine in China. At the time, the company
faced severe criticism in the U.S. over its compliance with the Chinese
government’s policies.
During a February 2006 congressional hearing that focused
on the activities of American technology companies in China, members of the
House International Relations Committee called Google a “functionary of the
Chinese government” and accused it of “abhorrent actions” for participating in
censorship. “Google has seriously compromised its ‘don’t be evil’ policy,”
declared Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J. “Indeed, it has become evil’s accomplice.”
The controversy eventually became too much for Google. In
March 2010, it announced that it was pulling its search service out of China.
In a blog post published at the time, the company cited Chinese government
efforts to limit free speech, block websites, and hack Google computer systems
as reasons why it “could no longer continue censoring our results.”
Sergey Brin, Google’s co-founder, was born in the Soviet
Union and seemed particularly sensitive to concerns around censorship, having
had personal experience under a repressive regime. After Google ceased its
search service in 2010, Brin said that the company’s objection related to
“forces of totalitarianism,” and added that he hoped the decision to pull the
search platform out of the country would help lead to a “more open internet.”
“Companies operating in China must be prepared to turn
over user data to security agencies.”
Since then, however, censorship and surveillance in China
has become more pervasive. In 2016, the country’s government passed a new
cybersecurity law, which Human Rights Watch said “strengthens censorship,
surveillance, and other controls over the internet.” The government is using
new automated systems to monitor and censor the internet, and it has cracked
down on privacy technologies that Chinese people were using to circumvent the
restrictions.
“It has been a requirement that companies operating in
China must be prepared to police their users and turn over user data to
security agencies upon request,” said Ron Deibert, director of Citizen Lab, an
internet research group based at the University of Toronto. “We have also found
overall that internet censorship [in China] is evolving towards less
transparency, with less notification to users when messages are censored or
removed across all platforms.”
Despite the continued repression, opinions have changed
at the highest levels of Google. China now has more than 750 million internet
users, equivalent to the entire population of Europe. It therefore represents a
potentially massive revenue stream for the internet giant, which is likely a
factor in its decision to relaunch the search platform in the country.
Another reason for the planned policy reversal may be
that since Google last operated its search tool in China, the company’s
leadership structure has markedly changed. Co-founders Brin and Larry Page have
adopted less hands-on roles, though they still serve on the company’s board of
directors.
Google’s China rapproachment has been spearheaded by
Pichai, Google’s current CEO, a 46-year-old Indian-American who took the helm
in October 2015. At a June 2016 conference in southern California, Pichai made
his intentions clear. “I care about servicing users globally in every corner.
Google is for everyone,” he said. “We want to be in China serving Chinese
users.”
In December 2017, sources say Pichai traveled to China
and attended a private meeting with Wang Huning, a leading figure in the
Communist Party. Huning is President Xi’s top foreign policy adviser and has
been described as “China’s Kissinger.” Pichai is said to have viewed the
meeting as a success. The same month, Google announced that it was launching an
artificial intelligence research center in Beijing. That was followed in May
2018 with the release of a Google file management app for Chinese internet
users. Then, in July, Google rolled out a “Guess The Sketch” game on WeChat, a
popular Chinese messaging and social media platform.
The finale would be the launch of the search app — the
Dragonfly project. According to sources familiar with the plans, timing for the
app’s release will depend on two main factors: approval from the Chinese
government and confidence within Google that its app will be better than the
search service offered by its main competitor in China, Baidu.
Google insiders say that it is not known when the company
will obtain the approval from officials in Beijing because an escalating trade
war between the U.S. and China has slowed the process. However, Google’s search
engine chief Ben Gomes told staff at a meeting last month that they must be
ready to launch the Chinese search app at short notice, in the event that
“suddenly the world changes or [President Donald Trump] decides his new best
friend is Xi Jinping.”
Google and the Chinese government’s Ministry of Foreign
Affairs did not respond to multiple requests for comment on this story.
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