Google embraces ‘evil’ with CENSORED search engine for oppressive China
The tech giant is working on a top-secret app that removes search results deemed controversial by China, including references to religion and human rights abuses
GOOGLE's "evil" plan to gain a foothold in China with a censored search engine that scrubs results about human rights and religion has been exposed.
In the next few months, the tech giant will launch a custom Android app that bows to the country's oppressive Communist regime by restricting access to info officials deem "unfavourable", according to .
The publication was tipped off to Google's secret meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping's top aides by insiders "familiar with the plans" and internal documents.
Just months after it axed its "Don't be evil" motto from its code of conduct, is the big G fully embracing the dark side?
The so-called "Dragonfly" project hinges on an app for Google's Android mobile operating system – the most popular smartphone OS in China by a mile and Google's one bright spot in the country, which has long banned its most popular products, including its search engine.
This exclusive new app will automatically suppress references to “anticommunist,” “dissidents,” the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, “Animal Farm,” “1984”, and anything else China doesn't want its more than 1.3billion citizens (over 750million of who have internet access) reading up on.
When the locals type in a "sensitive query” censored by the regime’s Great Firewall, the heavily-modified Google search engine will yield a “no results shown”.
Those same rules will apply across Google's entire platform, encompassing image results, spell check, and suggested search features.
The company is going to great lengths to cover up how bad this looks lest it should fuel another employee uprising, similar to the internal protests that forced it out of a Pentagon contract to build drone warfare AI technology in June.
According to The Intercept, the top-secret project has been kept between a few hundred employees and is being hatched by "a handful of top executives and managers...with no public scrutiny.”
Here it seems those ethical concerns have been thrown overboard in favour of dollar signs and a huge raft of potential data.
But the company is already printing money like nobody's business: it raked in over $110billion in 2017 and is currently locked in a race with rivals Apple and Amazon to become the first trillion-dollar firm.
A Google spokesperson issued the following statement detailing its initiatives and investments in China.
"We provide a number of mobile apps in China, such as Google Translate and Files Go, help Chinese developers, and have made significant investments in Chinese companies like JD.com. But we don't comment on speculation about future plans."
Despite growing censorship in China, Google has been pining to get back in since shuttering its prior censor-friendly search engine () in 2010, after four years of faithful service to the Communist regime.
It blamed the closure on China's persistent "cyber-attacks", including a Gmail breach that saw the hackers snooping on the emails of human rights activists.
But it failed to mention the bubbling backlash at home.
During a 2006 congressional , representative Chris Smith told the House International Relations Committee that "Google has seriously compromised its 'don't be evil policy.' Indeed, it has become evil's accomplice."
Fast-forward to 2016, and Google had seemingly forgiven China for exploiting its platforms.
“We want to be in China serving Chinese users,” declared CEO Sundar Pichai that year.
But Google isn't the only Silicon Valley giant looking to get up close with supreme leader Xi Jinping.
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In 2016, it was revealed that Facebook – which is also banned in the country since 2009 – is a version of its social network that enables a third-party to automatically block controversial stories and topics from users' feeds.
Apple has also clamped down on and in its iOS App Store to obey local laws.
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