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Representatives of a number of large tech companies appeared before an American Senate committee. They talked about data privacy and concerns about consumer protection. Google sent his new privacy chief Ketih Enright to the hearing, and he received several questions about the rumors that Google is working on a search engine for the Chinese market.

The site VentureBeat reports that Enright wanted to confirm that there is such a thing as Project Dragonfly. At the same time, he couldn’t tell us exactly what the project was all about. I do not know what falls within the project, says Enright in response to a question from Senator Ted Cruz. At the same time, he stated that the company is not close to launching a search engine in China.

Project Dragonfly

There’s been speculation about a Project Dragonfly for almost two months. At the beginning of August, The Intercept reported that Google had a censored search engine in development, specifically for the Chinese market. It would then be possible to censor specific terms, as well as certain sites. Shortly afterwards, Google employees sent a letter to the management about the plans and their concerns.

The news prompted six American senators to send a concerned letter to Google. In it, they asked for additional information about the possible project and called it very worrying if it did indeed exist. Today, Enright repeatedly stated that the company is not about to launch its own search engine in China.

Exploratory phase

A Google spokesman also stated to VentureBeat that the work on a possible search engine in China is at best in an exploratory phase. Details have not yet been confirmed, but it is clear that Google is at least considering bringing another search engine to the Chinese market.

Nevertheless, there has recently been some rapprochement between Google and the Chinese market. Together with the Chinese company Tencent, it is active and offers a game on the popular WeChat app, among other things. Google also opened an AI research lab in Beijing. A new search engine might be an extension of this approach.

This news article was automatically translated from Dutch to give Techzine.eu a head start. All news articles after September 1, 2019 are written in native English and NOT translated. All our background stories are written in native English as well. For more information read our launch article.