It has nothing to do with their core values and everything to do with the money available from 1.3 billion Chinese.
During a grueling 3.5 hour congressional committee hearing today, Google CEO Sundar Pichai faced some tough questions around his company’s controversial project to build a censored search product in China.
Pichai could have used the opportunity to publicly scrap plans to build a version of his company’s core tool, code-named Dragonfly, that would block terms such as “human rights,” “Nobel Prize” and “student protest” from search results in China.
But when House Rep. David Cicilline asked Pichai point blank if, as CEO, he would rule out launching a “tool for surveillance and censorship in China,” Pichai deflected.
“One of the things that’s important to us as a company, we have a stated mission of providing users with information, and so we always think it’s in our duty to explore possibilities to give users access to information,” said Pichai in response.
“As I’ve said earlier on this, we’ll be very thoughtful and we will engage widely as we make progress,” he added.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai refused to rule out launching a censored search engine in China
Uncovering and explaining how our digital world is changing – and changing us. During a grueling 3.5 hour congressional committee hearing today, Google CEO Sundar Pichai faced some tough questions around his company’s controversial project to build a censored search product in China.