Google is testing a mobile version of its search engine that would adhere to China’s strict controls over content, reports The Intercept. Google teams have created a custom Android app, which 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 report said.
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.
Google abandoned the Chinese market eight years ago in protest over government censorship. The company already offers several other apps in China, works with Chinese developers and has invested in Chinese companies including e-commerce giant JD.com.
Documents seen by The Intercept, marked 'Google confidential', say that Google’s Chinese search app would automatically identify and filter websites blocked by China's so-called Great Firewall. When a person carries out a search, banned websites would be removed from the first page of results, and a disclaimer displayed stating that "some results may have been removed due to statutory requirements". Examples of websites subject to the censorship include those of the BBC and Wikipedia. The search app would also blacklist sensitive queries so that no results are shown at all when people enter certain words or phrases, the documents state.
