A company executive has said that Google’s contentious plan to unveil a censored search engine in China has been terminated.
Although the project was reported to have stopped late last year, there were rumors that it still remained active.
Google executive Karan Bhatia said: “We have terminated Project Dragonfly.” A spokesman for the company later verified that Google was not considering launching search in China with no work being done in that regard.
Google’s model Chinese search engine had previously been branded “disturbing” by one former employee.
Dragonfly had drawn censure as a possible means through which Chinese authorities could expurgate web content and screen citizens’ behavior online.
In late 2018, Google appeared disinclined to confirm that the development of the search engine had been totally stopped, notwithstanding rising pressure on the firm.
Chief executive Sundar Pichai told the US House Judiciary Committee in December that work on Dragonfly at that point was “limited”.
As per documents secured by investigative news site The Intercept, Dragonfly was launched as a company project in the spring of 2017.