Dragonfly (search engine)

The Dragonfly search engine was reportedly designed to link users' phone numbers to their search queries[9][1] and censor websites such as Wikipedia and those that publish information about freedom of speech,[10] human rights, democracy, religion, and other issues considered sensitive by the Chinese government.[11] It is not designed to notify searchers when the information they want has been censored.[3] On September 21, 2018, The Intercept reported on an internal memo authored by a Google engineer which contained details about the project.[4][5] According to a transcript of a July 18 meeting published by The Intercept, Google's search engine chief Ben Gomes stated that although the future was "unpredictable", he wanted the app to be ready to launch in "six to nine months".[11][12]

Google executives stated in 2018 that Dragonfly was "exploratory", "in early stages" and that Google was "not close to launching a search product in China".[13][14] In a mid-October 2018 presentation, Google CEO Sundar Pichai discussed Dragonfly, stating, "We don't know whether we could or would do this in China, but we felt it was important for us to explore." He praised the prototype, saying it would provide better information to users than do the other search engines currently operating in China.[15][16] He specifically highlighted Google's ability to provide accurate search results regarding the efficacy of certain medical treatments, alluding to the death of Wei Zexi, a Baidu user who died after receiving an experimental cancer treatment that he had learned of via a promoted result on that search engine.[17][18] He also said that the scope of the censorship carried out by the Dragonfly prototype would be limited: if launched, the search engine would return results for 99% of queries by Chinese citizens and leave only 1% unanswered.[19] He acknowledged that, at one point, 100+ people were working on Dragonfly.[20]

In late November 2018, an engineer who worked on Dragonfly told The Intercept that Google had shut their privacy and security teams out of the project.[21] However, a director of security and privacy at Google said she "saw no sidelining whatsoever." Google issued a statement, saying privacy reviews were "non-negotiable".[22]

In late November, an open letter to the public was published on Medium signed by hundreds of Google employees in opposition to the “Dragonfly” search engine.  The employees felt that this search engine violated the user's privacy and did not align with the values of the company that they agreed to work for.  The employees felt that this search engine would cause oppression among the Chinese citizens and abused human rights—which is not a part of Google's company values.  Previously, Google stayed out of the Chinese market because they did not want to have to alter their values on human rights and privacy to comply with the Chinese government, so when the news broke about the search engine, many employees agreed to publicly sign a letter to show their alliance with Amnesty International to show their opposition to the project.[23]

Google's relations with China have been fraught since the tech giant's arrival there in 2006. Google's first China-specific platform, Google.cn, was also a self-censored one: like the Dragonfly prototype, it was engineered so as not to return results for topics blacklisted by the Chinese government. Unlike Dragonfly, though, Google.cn was set up to notify searchers when the results they sought had been removed.[3] In response to criticism over Google.cn at the time of its launch, Google asserted that "while removing search results is inconsistent with our mission, providing no information is more inconsistent with our mission," referring to the alternative of not servicing Chinese users at all.[24] Google also downplayed the extent of the new search engine's censorship, reminding users that it also removes search results from its German, French, and U.S. platforms in order to comply with local government regulations in those countries.[24] Ultimately, Google.cn received tepid acceptance: some commentators even praised the search engine with the logic that Chinese citizens, through conducting searches and observing which results had been removed, could better their understanding of what it was their government did not want them to see.[19]

In January 2010, Google fell victim to Operation Aurora, a sophisticated series of cyberattacks carried out by Chinese hackers who targeted a number of major U.S. corporations, including Yahoo, Adobe, Dow Chemical, and Morgan Stanley.[25] The hackers stole Google source code and gained access to the Gmail accounts of several prominent Chinese human rights activists who were living abroad.[26] In response to both the attack and what then-Google-CEO Sergey Brin called a "broader pattern" of China's surveillance of human rights activists, Google discontinued Google.cn and began rerouting Chinese users to Google.hk, an uncensored (at least on Google's end) search engine based out of Hong Kong.[27] Almost immediately, the Chinese government blocked Chinese users' access to certain results produced by that engine.[3] Brin justified Google's sudden policy switch by arguing that operating a search engine in China no longer aligned with Google's goals of advancing internet freedom, as the company had been seeing a daily increase in requests for certain topics or search terms to be censored, rather than the other way around.[27] Google faced widespread criticism for the decision which some commentators called a "face saving capitulation": an attempt by Google to take a stand for internet freedom while still preserving their share of the Chinese market. Other critics alleged that Google's shuttering of Google.cn was simply a well-timed business move—made because the company had only a 35% market share after four years in China—that had little to do with either Operation Aurora or Beijing's growing demands for censored content.[28]

From March 2010, when Google stopped servicing China via Google.cn, to 2018, China's internet user population has increased by 70%, to 772 million users.[29][3] This means that, for Google, who makes most of its revenue from advertisements run on its search engines, the potential profits of reentering the Chinese search engine market are enormous.[3] Yet, analysts have suggested that if Google does reenter China—either with the Dragonfly prototype or a different search model—it might initially struggle to meet its revenue goals. Google's advertising strategy is highly targeted: it involves collecting data on users' search histories and using that data to present users with advertisements which are applicable to them. Google has missed out on nearly a decade of data on prospective Chinese users, making that advertising strategy difficult to execute, at least immediately.[29] Additionally, it is not clear that Google's search product would be able to outcompete Chinese search engines like Baidu and Sogou, which have coveted partnerships with the technology platforms Windows and WeChat, respectively.[29]

Because Google is not available for users in China, the company wanted to find a way to become a part of the Chinese market.  The Google search engine was designed specifically to be used on an Android smartphone. With the download of this application on the smartphone, the application would easily be allowed to track an individual's searches.  This could cause a concern for the consumers in China because if they were to search for something that was illegal within the Chinese government, this information could cause interrogation or other legal consequences for the users in China.

The Google search engine was also planning to alter the accuracy of the weather and air quality index that would be provided to the consumers in China. The change in information would downplay the actual air pollution to keep the citizens in China less informed about the actual quality of their air.[30]

In testimony given to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee in July 2019, Karan Bhatia, the vice president of public policy at Google, announced that work on Dragonfly had been "terminated".[8][49]

While the launch of Dragonfly was terminated, Google did not promise that any work with Chinese censorship in the future will be out of the question. However, there are no current plans in the making. Bhatia made a comment during his U.S. Senate Judiciary hearing that “any decision to ever look at going back into the China search market is one that we would take only in consultation with key stakeholders.”[50]  This theoretically leaves the door open for further projects in the future.

• Criticism of Google
• Google China
• Websites blocked in mainland China