Google's CEO Says Tests of Censored Chinese Search Engine Have Been Very Promising

At Wired's 25th anniversary summit, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said the company's internal tests developing a censored search engine in China have been very promising. Pichai is strengthening his commitment on the controversial search engine, codenamed Project Dragonfly, saying the potential to expose the world to more information is guiding Google's push into China. 'We are compelled by our mission [to] provide information to everyone, and [China is] 20 percent of the world's population.' Wired reports: Pichai was careful to emphasize that this was a decision that weighs heavy on the company. 'People don't understand fully, but you're always balancing a set of values,' in every new country, he said. Those values include providing access to information, freedom of expression, and user privacy. 'But we also follow the rule of law in every country,' he said. This is a reversal of a decision from about eight years, when Google pulled its search engine, which was also censored, from the Chinese market. Pichai said the time had come to reevaluate that choice. 'It's a wonderful, innovative market. We wanted to learn what it would look like if we were in China, so that's what we built internally,' Pichai said. 'Given how important the market is and how many users there are,' he added, 'we feel obliged to think hard about this problem and take a longer-term view.' In response to the company's decision to back out of a project with the Department of Defense, nicknamed Project Maven, to build AI and facial recognition technology, and the employee concerns surrounding it, Pichai said: 'Throughout Google's history, we've given our employees a lot of voice and say. But we don't run the company by holding referendums. It's an important input. We take it seriously.' On the issue of Maven, however, 'it's more also the debate within the AI Community around how you perceive our work in the area.'

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