Dragonfly (search system)

2019: Official project closure

In the middle of July, 2019 Google officially announced project closure of the search system for the Chinese market. Development was stopped under pressure of employees and human rights organizations.

Over Dragonfly search engine announced the Engadget edition with reference to the statement of the vice president of Google for state policy termination of work Karan Bhatia  at a meeting of the judicial commission of the U.S. Senate. Later the press service of the company specified that work on the project is stopped, and the company is not going to start the search system in China.

Google officially wound up development of the Chinese search engine with censorship

The statement was made approximately in half a year after the CEO of Google Sundar Pichai reported to the American congress that the corporation "has no plans for start of search service in China", but completely the project is not winded down.

Though Google also confirmed that it works on the project code-named Dragonfly, the company did not report any details about is mute except that its development goes well. Nevertheless, the project of the censored searcher faced global negative reaction as soon as about it more details appeared. The Amnesty International human rights organization organized a protest, and the Congress interrogated the head of Google on a subject.

According to the BuzzFeed edition, despite the official statement, non-management employees of Google are afraid of the fact that the company will continue to conduct the hidden project development of Dragonfly.

Google used the domain 265.com belonging to it to study search preferences of Chinese and to configure algorithms for the proprietary application. 265.com served as the entrance page, redirecting all requests for Baidu — the search system, largest in the country.

When  the 265.com resource was closed, the development team of Dragonfly lost a valuable source of information that strongly complicated further work on the project.^[1]

2018

Application programming of Dragonfly for Android devices

On September 17, 2018 fat is known that the Google company presumably works on a prototype systems for communication of search queries with phone numbers of the users introducing them in China. A system should become a part of the next search service meeting requirements of the Chinese legislation in the field of censorship.

Application programming of Dragonfly for Android devices was kept a secret until in August the anonymous source told about it to the The Intercept edition. According to journalists, Dragonfly can become attached to the phone number and by that to simplify tracking of search queries of users.

Tracking will become one more function of the searcher along with the black list of search queries, such as "human rights", "a student's protest" and Nobel Prize which in China as a rule issues news about the Chinese activist, the Nobel Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo. According to the source, in search engine also "function of substitution of data on air pollution is strictly ciphered by the data obtained from the Chinese source and for certain "corrected"".

Google denies existence of the project and in most cases refuses to give comments about it. Earlier the company reported that it carries out only "research" for the Chinese search engine and still "is far from start of a search product" in this country.^[2]

Staff of Google revolts against creation of the censored searcher for China

In August, 2018 it became known that about 1400 employees of Google signed the letter with a protest against development for China of the special censored version of the search system.

See Also: Censorship (control) on the Internet. Experience of China

According to the The New York Times newspaper which received the copy of this letter many employees of Google learned about the Dragonfly project from mass media and now demand from the management of bigger transparency.

In August, 2018 several large editions reported that Google which search engine is blocked in China since 2010 works on the project code-named Dragonfly. He assumes creation of the search system with the built-in strict censorship.

Google prepares for China the separate version of the search system with strict censorship

It is supposed that service will automatically delete links to the requests blocked by a so-called "Great Chinese fayervol" from issue and also to issue the empty page in attempt of the user to enter the prohibited request. The commercial start of the project is planned for 2019. To the middle of August Google waits from the authorities of approval on start of a product.

Staff of Google in the letter signed in protest at Dragonfly pointed to ethical and moral problems which will arise at return of the company to the People's Republic of China. 

Now we have no information necessary to make ethically reasoned decisions concerning our work, projects and employment — dissatisfied employees of Google said.

One of the American senators in the statement referred to the recent declaration of Google that the company will never create tools of artificial intelligence for weapon or systems which can do to people harm.

Google will be able to return on the Chinese market if follows the local legislation and regulations of the Internet,  People's Daily, the English-language version of the official Chinese newspaper "Renmin Zhibao" (publication of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China) writes.^[3]

See Also

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