Dragonfly (search engine)

The Dragonfly project was an Internet search engine prototype created by Google that was designed to be compatible with China's state censorship provisions. The public learned of Dragonfly's existence in August 2018, when The Intercept leaked an internal memo written by a Google employee about the project. In December 2018, Dragonfly was reported to have "effectively been shut down" after a clash with members of the privacy team within Google. However, according to employees, work on Dragonfly was still continuing as of March 2019, with some 100 people still allocated to it. In July 2019, Google announced that work on Dragonfly had been terminated. The Dragonfly search engine was reportedly designed to link users' phone numbers to their search queries and censor websites such as Wikipedia and those that publish information about freedom of speech, human rights, democracy, religion, and other issues considered sensitive by the Chinese government. It is not designed to notify searchers when the information they want has been censored. On September 21, 2018, The Intercept reported on an internal memo authored by a Google engineer which contained details about the project. 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". 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". 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.