14 DAY TRIAL // According to undisclosed sources, Google has built a censored version of their search engine specifically designed to fit the requirements of the Chinese online search market reports The Intercept.
Dragonfly is the name of the censorship-powered search engine made by Google for China, an Android search engine which automatically assigns the user's search queries to their phone numbers, allowing the government to keep a very close eye on what each of their citizens is doing on the Internet.
“This is very problematic from a privacy point of view, because it would allow far more detailed tracking and profiling of people’s behavior. Linking searches to a phone number would make it much harder for people to avoid the kind of overreaching government surveillance that is pervasive in China,” said Human Rights Watch's Cynthia Wong.
Furthermore, the new search engine devised by Google to be their proverbial foot in the door on the Chinese online search market will also take heed of what the Chinese Communist Party considers "dangerous" content and wants to be removed.
The Dragonfly search engine also comes with a built-in database of blacklisted queries, reaching a wide array of areas but mostly focusing on Mandarin terms such as protest and human rights.
The censorship-powered Android search app was already advertised by Google's friendlier outlook on China
Even though being under fire for its new approach on how their rumored Android search engine approaches China's long-standing censorship rules and ambitions, Google refused to comment on their plans and their CEO Sundar Pichai declined to testify in front of the US Senate's Intelligence Committee.
The Dragonfly search engine for Android devices was already the subject of a leak saying that Google is preparing to launch it as its opportunity at a return to China after Google announced they were shutting down their google.cn search engine because they wanted to take a stance against China's heavy censorship.
Afterward, China's government gradually blocked all Google services operating in the country, starting with Gmail and ending up with Google's Maps, Translate, and Drive.
This latest development with Google showing a more friendly view of China's censorship comes as no surprise after Sundar Pichai's Chinese visit in December 2017, meeting Communist Party leader Wang Huning and subsequently, announcing the launch of a Beijing artificial intelligence research center.