‘Right now there are no plans to launch search in China’ says CEO, who is alos questioned on data and privacy by House committee
Google’s chief executive, Sundar Pichai, testified before the House judiciary committee on Tuesday morning, three months after his company thumbed its nose at Congress by failing to appear alongside Facebook and Twitter at a Senate hearing on election interference.
In a hearing heavy on partisan theatrics, Pichai notably refused to rule out launching a censored search engine in China, a controversial plan that has garnered significant criticism from human rights organizations as well as rank-and-file Google employees.
“Right now there are no plans to launch search in China,” Pichai said numerous times, repeating a talking point that the company has relied on since news of the project leaked in August. Pichai characterized the Chinese search product as an “internal effort” and said the company would be “transparent” and consult with policy makers before launching in China.
Pressed to rule out launching a tool that would enable censorship and surveillance in China, however, 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.”
“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. He also revealed that “at one point” the company had more than 100 people working on the project.
