In 2010, four years after the launch of www.google.cn, Google’s search engine was pulled out of the communist nation. This come after controversies over censorship of search results and reports of government-led cyberattacks; the company was also struggling to compete against local competitor Baidu, which had over 60% of the Chinese market and was abiding by the rules set upon by the State Council.

Fast forward to August 2018, online news publication The Intercept reported that Google has spent the last two years working on a prototype of a censored search engine that will be deployed in China. Unbeknownst to many, several top executive including CEO Sundar Pichai, Google China Vice President Scott Beaumont and Google Head of Search Ben Gomes have been plotting a secret comeback for the company. Named Project Dragonfly, it was conceptualized in 2016 and remained as one of Google’s top priorities until its effective shutdown in late December of 2018.

“China is the most interesting market in the world today. Google was not just trying to make money by doing business in China… We need to understand what is happening there in order to inspire us. China will teach us things we don’t know.” — Ben Gomes, Google Head of Search

What is Project Dragonfly?

Under project Dragonfly, a group of Google engineers were secretly recruited to customize a search engine that will conform to the standards and strict rules of China’s authoritarian Communist Party of China (CPC). This involved blacklisting sensitive search results such as human rights, democracy, and LGBT while blocking out events such as the Tiananmen Square massacre, the Tibet independence movement and the secret detention camp in Xinjiang.

To optimize the search engine for use in China, user data was harvested from 265.com, a Beijing-based Mandarin web directory service acquired by Google in 2008. 265.com provides Chinese users with daily news as well as online discounts and offers. Google engineers compiled a dataset of searches that Chinese users keyed into 265.com search engine and extracted websites that are blocked by China’s Great Firewall using a toolkit named BeaconTower. The integration of this list of blocked websites into Dragonfly thus created Google’s own Great Firewall, allowing it to carry out searches in accordance with China’s censorship regulations.

Massive Backlash Within and Beyond Google

After news of project Dragonfly broke out, many human rights activist including Google employees spoke out, openly condemning the project. An article titled We are Google employees. Google must drop Dragonfly. , stating that the project Dragonfly will “enable censorship and government-directed disinformation, and destabilize the ground truth on which popular deliberation and dissent rely.” The article included Amnesty International and hundreds of Google employees who demand for accountability and the cancellation of the project. An internal letter signed by 1,400 Google employees was also circulated on Google’s internal communication system, calling for more calling for more transparency as they seek to uphold Google’s unofficial motto: Don’t Be Evil.

“Our opposition to Dragonfly is not about China: we object to technologies that aid the powerful in oppressing the vulnerable, wherever they may be.” — Excerpt from “We are Google employees. Google must drop Dragonfly”

Google CEO Sundar Pichai at the Congressional Hearing

Nonetheless, in a separate internal letter, some Google employees have voiced out support for the project, stating that Dragonfly is aligned with Google’s mission ‘to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful’. Over 500 signatures were collected.

During a speech at Hudson Institute, a Washington-based think tank, in October, US Vice President Mike Pence also called for Google to end the development of Dragonfly, stating that it will “strengthen Communist Party censorship and compromise the privacy of Chinese customers”

Despite massive backlash, CEO Sundar Pichai defended Project Dragonfly, calling the project ‘exploratory’ and that Google could still ‘serve well over 99% of the search queries’ even with censorship. During the congressional hearing in December, Pichar elaborated that Google has ‘no plans to launch search in China’, contradicting previous reports that the search engine will be launched between January and April 2019.

Project Dragonfly: A Google Top Secret Project

Extensive findings and reports revealed that many Google executives supported the projectand took great lengths to keep it under wraps. According to employees working on the project, Google’s security and privacy team were excluded from key meetings to ensure that development of the search engine would continue unhindered. The project was micromanaged by Beaumont to ensure privacy and communication to outside staff was discouraged. Some members of the project were ‘threatened’ with termination of their contract if the strict confidentiality rules were broken. When a confidential memo detailing the project was leaked, Google executives rushed to prevent the expose, sending emails to the suspected employee ordering the deletion of the memo. However, it proved too late.

To supporters of Dragonfly, the project was justifiable. Google has longed to return to China, the world largest market for smartphone users as well as app spending. China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) reports that in 2018, 802 million individuals in China have access to the internet. To put into context, the United States have approximately 300 million internet users. To Google, Project Dragonfly was their best opportunity to reclaim their spot in the Chinese internet space.

Protest at Hong Kong

The (Likely) End of Project Dragonfly

A week after the congressional hearing, Google have reportedly put Project Dragonfly on hold. As reported by The Intercept, outrage from Google’s privacy team was the last straw. The privacy team was reportedly furious at project Dragonfly’s blatant use of 265.com data and disregard for the rights and privacy of the Chinese users. This represents a serious breach of Google’s protocol. Access to 265.com was immediately banned, effectively ending any potential progress for the project.

Many Google engineers working on the project have been reassigned to work on other projects in Brazil, India and Russia. The remaining engineers are reportedly told to use similar datasets from Google’s own search engine. However, these data are likely to originate outside of China and accuracy of the results will be reduced significantly.

Project Dragonfly Deserves a Second Chance. Google Deserves a Second Chance.

Admittedly, Google has put up a great fight in the early days against Chinese censorship; its withdrawal in 2010 was respectable. Now, many viewed project Dragonfly as a cash grab rather than a humanitarian effort.

However, it was Google’s best chance to recapture the Chinese internet space, and humanity best opportunity to understand China. China has created a thriving internet space that Western nations cannot fathom, albeit it came at a great cost: sacrifice of human rights and political action. With China’s internet becoming increasingly complex and guarded by the Great Firewall, inaction towards the nation’s internet progress would be akin to ignoring the growing white elephant in the room.

A second shot at redemption would involve complete transparency and better accountability. A committee consisting of independent experts could be formed. Third parties could be involved to carry out periodic audit. Progressive steps can be taken to ensure preservation of human rights. If properly engineered, Dragonfly 2.0 will do more good than harm.

To the majority, project Dragonfly was an outright betrayal of freedom and human rights. To the few who have supported, it represented an opportunity to get a better grasp of communism, or rather, totalitarianism. Nonetheless, many have failed to consider the propaganda that Chinese users are currently ‘suffering’ from, and the potential liberation that project Dragonfly can bring. Who won the battle and who lost the war, only those living under absolute rule deserve the right to answer.

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Hi all! I’m a freelance writer based in Singapore. I write about the latest tech happenings in the various industries as well as commentary on China. I also welcome any job opportunities that arises. Email me at chewweichun94@gmail.com.

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