Sundar Pichai Did Not Deny Development of Censored Chinese Version of Google

Google CEO Sundar Pichai endured a grueling 3.5 hours of questioning by the House Judiciary Committee on Monday. At one point he even had to explain that his company doesn’t make iPhones. However, as Re/Code reported, Mr. Pichai did not use the hearing to deny that Google will make a version of its search tool for China that censors information.

Pichai could have used the opportunity to publicly scrap plans to build a version of his company’s core tool, code-named Dragonfly, that would block terms such as “human rights,” “Nobel Prize,” and “student protest” from search results in China. But when House Rep. David Cicilline asked Pichai point blank if, as CEO, he would rule out launching a “tool for surveillance and censorship in China,” Pichai deflected.