Google wants to bring a large part of its services to China, irrespective of whether this means a contribution to the censorship that the government of this country applies to Internet content. At least this is what a new report by The Intercept suggests, stating that the technology giant plans to launch an Internet search engine whose results will be censored to meet Beijing’s requirements.
In the past, the Google search engine left the Asian country and claimed that the government wanted to restrict freedom of expression on the Internet. However, the new report cites the company’s interest in returning to the world’s largest Internet marketplace.
Apparently, the source of The Intercept revealed internal Google documents revealing the development of a censored version of the search engine under the code name’Dragonfly’. Everything points to the fact that this version is being created since last year and is based on an app for Android that contains a blacklist that filters out all websites blocked by China, including Wikipedia and BBC News.
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In fact, the censorship in the Google search engine is extended to images, the search functions proposed by the platform and even to spell checking. Today, the country’s Great Firewall is the government’s ideal tool to prevent citizens from accessing many websites that talk about religion, police repression, freedom of expression and democracy.
An article in The Guardian recently reported that since Xi Jinping’s arrival as president, censorship has increased in the country, extending to instant messaging applications and social networks.
The sources that indicated Google’s new search engine for China said they leaked this information because they are against the big governments that oppress people, and suggested that this model of the censored search engine will be an example for other nations whose policies are similar.