Google CEO says that he is still considering a censored search engine in China



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"It is very early, we do not know if we could or would like to do this in China, but we felt that it was important for us to explore," Pichai said at the Wired25 conference in San Francisco.

The company has publicly confirmed the existence of the controversial project at a Senate committee hearing at the end of September. Under the code name "Dragonfly" Google (GOOGL), the project was revealed for the first time by The Intercept in August. Google was working on the project in secret, but after the publication of reports on its existence, more than 1,000 Google employees signed a letter asking for more transparency, according to a New York Times report.

On Monday, Pichai described Dragonfly as an internal exploratory project. The absence of society in China – a country with 20% of the world's population – has weighed heavily on Google, whose mission is to provide information "to all".

"We wanted to know what it would look like if Google were in China," Pichai said. "So that's what we built internally." If Google were to operate in China, what would it look like? "

According to Pichai, Google discovered that Chinese government censors would block less than 1 percent of users' searches.

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The prospect of Google's return to China has fueled criticism from human rights groups that the company, which has long advocated a free and open Internet, would deal with the Chinese Communist Party at home. power, which runs a vast apparatus of censorship that stifles dissent.

Google had a search engine in China from 2006 to 2010, but had not proposed it for eight years due to concerns over government censorship. A handful of other Google products are available in the country, including its Android mobile operating system and some apps.

Pichai said that by once again offering a search engine in China, the company would be able to provide users with more comprehensive information than available on important topics, such as cancer treatments.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai said the company

Doing business with the Pentagon

The CEO also referred to another recent controversial decision of the company. In June, Google refused to renew a contract with the Pentagon after employees and outside groups expressed concern over the use of artificial intelligence in armaments.

"When you're so young with powerful technology, how do you do it thoughtfully?" Pichai said Monday.

Google also withdrew this month from signing a multi-billion dollar cloud computing deal with the Pentagon because the project could have been at odds with its principles of ## 148 ## 39, enterprise in the field of artificial intelligence.

Jeff Bezos: Amazon will continue to work with DoD
The president of Amazon (AMZN), Jeff Bezos, defended Monday the continuation of the contract by his company, saying that she would continue to deal with the Ministry of Defense, despite internal and external criticism.
"If big tech companies have to turn their backs on DoD, this country is going to have problems," Bezos said at the Wired25 event.

Pichai said that Google was still working with the army on other projects, but that he was sticking to tasks for which he is more "qualified". This includes domains such as cybersecurity and logistics.

He downplayed the influence that employee protests had on the company's decision-making process.

"Throughout the history of Google, we have talked a lot about our employees, but we do not run the company by holding referendums," Pichai said. "This is an important input that we take seriously, but even on this particular issue, it is not what employees have said, but rather the debate within the community of the" ". IA. "

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