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Jack Poulson, senior researcher at Google, reportedly resigned last month from the secret research product, designed to automatically filter out content deemed unacceptable by the Chinese government.
Google's secret effort to develop a censored search product for China would have pushed some employees to resign in protest.
Jack Poulson, one of Google's leading researchers, left the company on Aug. 31, according to The Intercept. "I consider that our intention to capitulate to requests for censorship and surveillance in exchange for access to the Chinese market is a confiscation of our values," wrote Poulson in his resignation letter to Google.
Poulson told The Intercept that he was one of five employees to resign after the tech giant's attempt to re-enter the Chinese market with the censored research product. Nicknamed Dragonfly, the product is designed as an Android app that will filter content related to human rights, democracy and peaceful protests – all topics that the Chinese government often censors to eradicate dissent.
Until now, Google has declined to comment on Project Dragonfly and reported resignations. In 2010, the company largely left the Chinese market after trying to comply with the country's strict online censorship policies. Since then, China has broadened its approach to content blocking, but the country is now one of the largest technology markets in the world.
Project Dragonfly would have been known only from a few hundred Google employees. But last month, staff members began to oppose the secret project when The Intercept first reported product details in early August. To protest, more than 1,000 employees have signed an internal letter, calling on Google to adopt a greater "transparency and monitoring" of its future products.
Poulson himself did not work on Dragonfly, but his job was to improve the accuracy of Google's search systems. "This has serious repercussions on a global scale," he told Intercept. "What are Google's ethical red lines?" "We've already written some of them, but now we seem to be coming across them, I'd really like to see statements on Google's commitments."
The resignations take place just months after several other Google staff left the company after participating in a Pentagon project to use AI to analyze drone images. Following the resignations, Google has decided to stop work on the Pentagon project.
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