Dragonfly is dead. Google’s controversial project Dragonfly, created a lot of buzz last year when the report of the tech giant working on the tailored version of its search engine for China first surfaced on the internet. The report drew concerns not only from human rights activists but also from data privacy advocates and even Google employees, most of whom were unaware that the project was in works at the company. Now, nearly a year after reports about Google’s project Dragonfly first surfaced online, the company has admitted that the project has been abandoned for good.
Google’s vice president of public policy, Karan Bhatia, in a hearing at the Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this week said that project Dragonfly had been terminated. “We have terminated project Dragonfly,” Bhatia said in response to a question by Senator Josh Hawley.
When asked by BuzzFeed and other media outlets if terminated meant that Google would not launch a censored version of its search engine in China in future, a Google spokesperson pointed out a statement issued by the company back in March this year. “As we’ve said for many months, we have no plans to launch Search in China and there is no work being undertaken on such a project…Team members have moved to new projects,” the company said in a statement.Read More..
