Google has effectively suspended plans to develop a censored search engine for China following internal rifts over the controversial project, according to a report from investigative news site The Intercept. Google was forced to shut down a data analysis system crucial for the development of the censored Chinese search engine, known as Dragonfly, after receiving complaints from the company’s privacy team, the report said, citing two sources. Google’s search engine has been blocked in mainland China since early 2010, after the Silicon Valley giant decided to stop censoring searches as required by the Chinese government. Google had been using Beijing-based 265.com, a Chinese-language web directory service it bought in 2008, to gather data about what Chinese people routinely search for in Mandarin, according to the report. Following internal complaints from privacy staff, teams working on Dragonfly were told that they were no longer allowed to use the 265.com data to build the censored Chinese search project, according to the report.

Source: The Star December 18, 2018 08:26 UTC