Google has 'no plans' to launch Chinese search engine

Google has “no plans” to relaunch a search engine in China though it is continuing to study the idea, Chief Executive Sundar Pichai told a U.S. congressional panel on Tuesday amid increased scrutiny of big tech firms.

Background

Alphabet Inc. is an American multinational conglomerate headquartered in Mountain View, California. It was founded in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. It was created through a corporate restructuring of Google in October 2015 and became Google’s parent company and several former Google subsidiaries. The two founders of Google assumed executive roles in Alphabet, with Larry Page serving as CEO and Sergey Brin as President.

In 2006, Google launched Goodle.cn in China offering a version of its services that conformed to the government’s policies on censorship. At the time, company officials decided that the benefits of increased access to information for people in China – the internet’s largest population – “outweighed our discomfort in agreeing to censor some results.” Google’s main search platform has been blocked in China since 2010, but the Alphabet unit has been attempting to make new inroads into the country, which has the world’s largest number of smartphone users. Google left the Chinese marketplace due to concerns over hacking attacks, censorship and how the Chinese government was possibly gaining access to data.

Analysis

In a hearing with the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, Google CEO Sundar Pichai testified that the company right now has no plans to launch a search product in China. Lawmakers and Google employees have raised concerns that the company would comply with China’s internet censorship and surveillance policies if it re-enters the Asian nation’s search engine market.

Pichai said there are no current discussions with the Chinese government. He vowed that he would be “fully transparent” with policymakers if the company brings search products to China. He added that internally Google has “developed and looked at what search could look like. We’ve had the project underway for a while. “We have explored what search could look like if it were launched in a country like China,” the executive eventually conceded, though he dodged questions about specifics. At one point, we’ve had over 100 people working on it is my understanding.”

A Chinese government official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told Reuters last month that it was unlikely Google would get clearance to launch a search service in 2019. Pichai did not say what steps Google would take to comply with Chinese laws if it re-entered the market.

Pressed to rule out launching a tool that would enable censorship and surveillance in China, Pichai appeared to offer the company’s probable justification for reentering a market that it left in 2010: “We think it’s in our duty to explore possibilities to give users access to information.”

Much of the House hearing focused on Republican concerns that Google’s search results are biased against conservatives and that the company had sought to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. Under questioning from Democratic Representative David Cicilline, Pichai said he would “happy to engage” to discuss legislation that would empower the Federal Trade Commission to address discriminatory conduct online.

Pichai said the search engine attempts to help people register to vote or find a polling place, but rejected assertions the company paid for Latino voters’ transport to polls in some states. “We do not engage in partisan activities,” Pichai told the panel.

Assessment

Our assessment is that there is very little room for technology companies to negotiate with the Chinese government over terms concerning surveillance and censorship. We feel that it will be a hard ask for Google to provide consumers with services that significantly better than what they already receive from Baidu and the censored version of Bing.

We also feel that returning to the market would be inconsistent with Google’s recently announced policy on transparency. We understand that with a huge market of internet users in China, a re-entry would present ethical issues for Google which has long advocated for a free and open internet.