Dragonfly (search engine)

Last updated

The Dragonfly project was an Internet search engine prototype created by Google that was designed to be compatible with China's state censorship provisions. [1] [2] [3] The public learned of Dragonfly's existence in August 2018, when The Intercept leaked an internal memo written by a Google employee about the project. [4] [5] In December 2018, Dragonfly was reported to have "effectively been shut down" after a clash with members of the privacy team within Google. [6] However, according to employees, work on Dragonfly was still continuing as of March 2019, with some 100 people still allocated to it. [7]

Contents

In July 2019, Google announced that work on Dragonfly had been terminated. [8]

Development

The Dragonfly search engine was reportedly designed to link users' phone numbers to their search queries [9] [1] and censor websites such as Wikipedia and those that publish information about freedom of speech, [10] human rights, democracy, religion, and other issues considered sensitive by the Chinese government. [11] It is not designed to notify searchers when the information they want has been censored. [3] On September 21, 2018, The Intercept reported on an internal memo authored by a Google engineer which contained details about the project. [4] [5] According to a transcript of a July 18 meeting published by The Intercept, Google's search engine chief Ben Gomes stated that although the future was "unpredictable", he wanted the app to be ready to launch in "six to nine months". [11] [12]

Google executives stated in 2018 that Dragonfly was "exploratory", "in early stages" and that Google was "not close to launching a search product in China". [13] [14] In a mid-October 2018 presentation, Google CEO Sundar Pichai discussed Dragonfly, stating, "We don't know whether we could or would do this in China, but we felt it was important for us to explore." He praised the prototype, saying it would provide better information to users than do the other search engines currently operating in China. [15] [16] He specifically highlighted Google's ability to provide accurate search results regarding the efficacy of certain medical treatments, alluding to the death of Wei Zexi, a Baidu user who died after receiving an experimental cancer treatment that he had learned of via a promoted result on that search engine. [17] [18] He also said that the scope of the censorship carried out by the Dragonfly prototype would be limited: if launched, the search engine would return results for 99% of queries by Chinese citizens and leave only 1% unanswered. [19] He acknowledged that, at one point, 100+ people were working on Dragonfly. [20]

In late November 2018, an engineer who worked on Dragonfly told The Intercept that Google had shut their privacy and security teams out of the project. [21] However, a director of security and privacy at Google said she "saw no sidelining whatsoever." Google issued a statement, saying privacy reviews were "non-negotiable". [22]

In late November, an open letter to the public was published on Medium signed by hundreds of Google employees in opposition to the “Dragonfly” search engine. The employees felt that this search engine violated the user's privacy and did not align with the values of the company that they agreed to work for. The employees felt that this search engine would cause oppression among the Chinese citizens and abused human rights—which is not a part of Google's company values. Previously, Google stayed out of the Chinese market because they did not want to have to alter their values on human rights and privacy to comply with the Chinese government, so when the news broke about the search engine, many employees agreed to publicly sign a letter to show their alliance with Amnesty International to show their opposition to the project. [23]

Historical background and precedent

Google's relations with China have been fraught since the tech giant's arrival there in 2006. Google's first China-specific platform, Google.cn, was also a self-censored one: like the Dragonfly prototype, it was engineered so as not to return results for topics blacklisted by the Chinese government. Unlike Dragonfly, though, Google.cn was set up to notify searchers when the results they sought had been removed. [3] In response to criticism over Google.cn at the time of its launch, Google asserted that "while removing search results is inconsistent with our mission, providing no information is more inconsistent with our mission," referring to the alternative of not servicing Chinese users at all. [24] Google also downplayed the extent of the new search engine's censorship, reminding users that it also removes search results from its German, French, and U.S. platforms in order to comply with local government regulations in those countries. [24] Ultimately, Google.cn received tepid acceptance: some commentators even praised the search engine with the logic that Chinese citizens, through conducting searches and observing which results had been removed, could better their understanding of what it was their government did not want them to see. [19]

In January 2010, Google fell victim to Operation Aurora, a sophisticated series of cyberattacks carried out by Chinese hackers who targeted a number of major U.S. corporations, including Yahoo, Adobe, Dow Chemical, and Morgan Stanley. [25] The hackers stole Google source code and gained access to the Gmail accounts of several prominent Chinese human rights activists who were living abroad. [26] In response to both the attack and what then-Google-CEO Sergey Brin called a "broader pattern" of China's surveillance of human rights activists, Google discontinued Google.cn and began rerouting Chinese users to Google.hk, an uncensored (at least on Google's end) search engine based out of Hong Kong. [27] Almost immediately, the Chinese government blocked Chinese users' access to certain results produced by that engine. [3] Brin justified Google's sudden policy switch by arguing that operating a search engine in China no longer aligned with Google's goals of advancing internet freedom, as the company had been seeing a daily increase in requests for certain topics or search terms to be censored, rather than the other way around. [27] Google faced widespread criticism for the decision which some commentators called a "face saving capitulation": an attempt by Google to take a stand for internet freedom while still preserving their share of the Chinese market. Other critics alleged that Google's shuttering of Google.cn was simply a well-timed business move—made because the company had only a 35% market share after four years in China—that had little to do with either Operation Aurora or Beijing's growing demands for censored content. [28]

Risks and rewards

From March 2010, when Google stopped serving China via Google.cn, to 2018, China's internet user population has increased by 70%, to 772 million users. [29] [3] This means that, for Google, who makes most of its revenue from advertisements run on its search engines, the potential profits of reentering the Chinese search engine market are enormous. [3] Yet, analysts have suggested that if Google does reenter China—either with the Dragonfly prototype or a different search model—it might initially struggle to meet its revenue goals. Google's advertising strategy is highly targeted: it involves collecting data on users' search histories and using that data to present users with advertisements which are applicable to them. Google has missed out on gathering nearly a decade of data about prospective Chinese users, making that advertising strategy difficult to execute, at least immediately. [29] Additionally, it is not clear that Google's search product would be able to outcompete Chinese search engines Baidu and Sogou, which have formally-established (and highly coveted) partnerships with technology platforms such as Windows and WeChat, respectively. [29]

Because Google is not available to users in China, the company wanted to find some way to gain access to the Chinese market. The Google Dragonfly search engine was designed specifically for use on Android smartphones. Once this application was downloaded to a smartphone, Dragonfly could easily be allowed to track an individual's searches. This could be cause for concern for Chinese consumers because if they were to search for something that was deemed illegal by the Chinese government, such information could result in interrogation or other legal consequences. [30]

Developers of the Google Dragonfly search engine planned to alter the accuracy of weather and air quality indices provided to consumers in China. Falsified weather changes would downplay the severity of pollution, thus keeping Chinese citizens less informed and more complacent about the actual quality of their air. [30]

Responses to the project

Criticism

Project Dragonfly has been subject to harsh criticism, particularly from Google employees and users. [31] [32] Shortly after publication of The Intercept article leaking details of the project, 1,400 Google employees signed a letter demanding more transparency about Dragonfly, as well as more say in the nature of the work done by Google in general. [2] [33] In late August Senior Google Research Scientist Jack Poulson resigned in protest. [34] In September 2018, Amnesty International released an open letter to Google's management condemning the project as an "alarming capitulation by Google on human rights" and calling for its cancellation. [35] At the end of November 2018, a number of Google employees authored a Medium article in support of Amnesty International's letter. They argued that a Dragonfly launch would set a precedent for the implementation of censored Google services in other countries, and expressed concern about Dragonfly's potential to contribute to a program of widespread state surveillance in China. [23] China is rumored to have been developing a "social credit system" which assigns each citizen a "score" based on their actions, conducted both online and offline. Purchasing alcohol and jaywalking reduce a citizen's score, for example, while purchasing diapers increases it. Chinese corporations are required by law to disclose the consumer data they collect to the government, presumably in part so it can be used to calculate these scores. [36] Analysts have theorized that, if Dragonfly becomes a reality, Google could be compelled to do the same. [37]

Following the publication of a second The Intercept article about the project, which alleged that Google bypassed standard security and privacy checks of Dragonfly, Google engineer Liz Fong-Jones tweeted a proposal for Google employees worldwide to go on strike. [38] She wrote that the "red line" for initiating the strike will be crossed if Google launches Dragonfly without conducting a thorough security and privacy review, or if evidence emerges that members of Google's Security and Privacy team were coerced into approving the project. [39] Fong-Jones has started a preemptive "strike fund" intended to support Google employees should they leave their positions, to which Google employees have already donated over $200K. [40]

Politicians have also spoken out. In early October 2018, Mike Pence called for an end to the development of Dragonfly, and said that, if launched, it would strengthen Communist Party censorship and compromise the privacy of Chinese customers. [41] [42] [43] In early December 2018, Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) criticized both Beijing and Google over the project, stating that Dragonfly evidences China's success at "recruit[ing] Western companies to their information control efforts." [44]

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joseph Dunford also criticized Google, stating that "it’s inexplicable" that Google continues investing in autocratic communist China, which uses censorship technology to restrain freedoms and crackdown on online speech, and has long history of intellectual property and patent theft that hurts U.S. companies, while simultaneously not renewing further research and development collaborations with the Pentagon. He said “I’m not sure that people at Google will enjoy a world order that is informed by the norms and standards of Russia or China.” He urged Google work directly with the U.S. government instead of making controversial inroads into China. [45]

Support

Amid widespread backlash, one contingent of Google employees has expressed its support for the project. In late November 2018, a Google employee submitted an unsigned letter to TechCrunch, an online technology news platform, calling for work on Dragonfly to continue because the project aligns with Google's mission to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." [46] The letter states that, although Dragonfly has the power to "do more harm than good," it is valuable in that it can shed light on "how different approaches may work out in China." [46] Three anonymous Google employees from China said they supported the project, citing a need for a competitor to the Chinese search engine Baidu, [47] Petal, Sogou.

Termination of project

In testimony given to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee in July 2019, Karan Bhatia, the vice president of public policy at Google, announced that work on Dragonfly had been "terminated". [8] [48]

While the launch of Dragonfly was terminated, Google did not promise that any work with Chinese censorship in the future will be out of the question. However, there are no current plans in the making. Bhatia made a comment during his U.S. Senate Judiciary hearing that “any decision to ever look at going back into the China search market is one that we would take only in consultation with key stakeholders.” [49]

See also

Related Research Articles

China censors both the publishing and viewing of online material. Many controversial events are censored from news coverage, preventing many Chinese citizens from knowing about the actions of their government, and severely restricting freedom of the press. China's censorship includes the complete blockage of various websites, apps, video games, inspiring the policy's nickname, the "Great Firewall of China", which blocks websites. Methods used to block websites and pages include DNS spoofing, blocking access to IP addresses, analyzing and filtering URLs, packet inspection, and resetting connections.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Internet in China</span>

China has been on the Internet intermittently since May 1989 and on a permanent basis since 20 April 1994, although with heavily censored access. In 2008, China became the country with the largest population on the Internet and, as of 2024, has remained so. As of July 2023, 1.05 billion use internet in China.

The Great Firewall is the combination of legislative actions and technologies enforced by the People's Republic of China to regulate the Internet domestically. Its role in internet censorship in China is to block access to selected foreign websites and to slow down cross-border internet traffic. The Great Firewall operates by checking transmission control protocol (TCP) packets for keywords or sensitive words. If the keywords or sensitive words appear in the TCP packets, access will be closed. If one link is closed, more links from the same machine will be blocked by the Great Firewall. The effect includes: limiting access to foreign information sources, blocking foreign internet tools and mobile apps, and requiring foreign companies to adapt to domestic regulations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Google</span> American multinational technology company

Google LLC is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial intelligence (AI). It has been referred to as "the most powerful company in the world" and is one of the world's most valuable brands due to its market dominance, data collection, and technological advantages in the field of AI. Google's parent company, Alphabet Inc. is one of the five Big Tech companies, alongside Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Baidu</span> Chinese web services company

Baidu, Inc. is a Chinese multinational technology company specializing in Internet-related services, headquartered in Beijing's Haidian District. It holds a dominant position in China's search engine market, and provides a wide variety of other internet services such as Baidu Baike, iQIYI, and Baidu Tieba.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Google China</span> Chinese subsidiary of Google

Google China is a subsidiary of Google. Once a popular search engine, most services offered by Google China were blocked by the Great Firewall in the People's Republic of China. In 2010, searching via all Google search sites, including Google Mobile, was moved from mainland China to Hong Kong.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Microsoft Bing</span> Web search engine developed by Microsoft

Microsoft Bing, commonly referred to as Bing, is a search engine owned and operated by Microsoft. The service traces its roots back to Microsoft's earlier search engines, including MSN Search, Windows Live Search, and Live Search. Bing offers a broad spectrum of search services, encompassing web, video, image, and map search products, all developed using ASP.NET.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Baidu Baike</span> Chinese wiki-based online encyclopedia

Baidu Baike is a semi-regulated Chinese-language collaborative online encyclopedia owned by the Chinese technology company Baidu. The beta version was launched on April 20, 2006, and the official version was launched on April 21, 2008, edited by registered users. As of February 2022, it has 25.54 million entries and more than 7.5 million editors. It has the largest number of entries in the world of any Chinese-language online encyclopedia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robin Li</span> Chinese software engineer and billionaire internet entrepreneur (born 1968)

Robin Li Yanhong is a Chinese software engineer and billionaire internet entrepreneur who is the co-founder and chief executive officer of Chinese multinational technology company Baidu. As of June 2023, his net worth was estimated at US$8.6 billion by Forbes.

Google and its subsidiary companies, such as YouTube, have removed or omitted information from its services in order to comply with company policies, legal demands, and government censorship laws.

Criticism of Google includes concern for tax avoidance, misuse and manipulation of search results, its use of others' intellectual property, concerns that its compilation of data may violate people's privacy and collaboration with the US military on Google Earth to spy on users, censorship of search results and content, and the energy consumption of its servers as well as concerns over traditional business issues such as monopoly, restraint of trade, antitrust, patent infringement, indexing and presenting false information and propaganda in search results, and being an "Ideological Echo Chamber".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Internet censorship</span> Legal control of the internet

Internet censorship is the legal control or suppression of what can be accessed, published, or viewed on the Internet. Censorship is most often applied to specific internet domains but exceptionally may extend to all Internet resources located outside the jurisdiction of the censoring state. Internet censorship may also put restrictions on what information can be made internet accessible. Organizations providing internet access – such as schools and libraries – may choose to preclude access to material that they consider undesirable, offensive, age-inappropriate or even illegal, and regard this as ethical behavior rather than censorship. Individuals and organizations may engage in self-censorship of material they publish, for moral, religious, or business reasons, to conform to societal norms, political views, due to intimidation, or out of fear of legal or other consequences.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Illegal flower tribute</span> Chinese Internet meme

"Illegal flower tribute" is an Internet meme that emerged after Google's announcement of a possible exit from Mainland China in January 2010. On 12 January 2010, Google posted an article on its official Blogspot blog, entitled "A New Approach to China", in which it disclosed its decision to end compliance with the Internet censorship in China at Google.cn, citing recent politically motivated hacker attacks from China on Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists as its primary concern. Google also announced it had negotiated with the Chinese government on this issue, but no agreement or consensus on a non-censoring search engine was made, so traffic to Google.cn was re-routed to Google.com.hk.

Internet censorship circumvention, also referred to as going over the wall or scientific browsing in China, is the use of various methods and tools to bypass internet censorship.

The Public Pledge on Self-Discipline for the Chinese Internet Industry is an agreement between the Internet Society of China and companies that operate sites in China. In signing the agreement, web companies are pledging to identify and prevent the transmission of information that Chinese authorities deem objectionable, including information that “breaks laws or spreads superstition or obscenity”, or that “may jeopardize state security and disrupt social stability”.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">WeChat</span> Chinese messaging, social media, and payment app

WeChat or Weixin in Chinese ; lit. 'micro-message') is a Chinese instant messaging, social media, and mobile payment app developed by Tencent. First released in 2011, it became the world's largest standalone mobile app in 2018 with over 1 billion monthly active users. WeChat has been described as China's "app for everything" and a super-app because of its wide range of functions. WeChat provides text messaging, hold-to-talk voice messaging, broadcast (one-to-many) messaging, video conferencing, video games, mobile payment, sharing of photographs and videos and location sharing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ying Miao</span>

Miao Ying is a contemporary artist and writer who is based in New York City and Shanghai, best known for her research based projects addressing her Stockholm Syndrome relationship with the Chinese internet such as The Blind Spot (2007), Chinternet Plus (2016), and online culture inside the Great Firewall. Her works inhabit multiple forms including paintings, websites, installations, machine learning software, VR and videos; highlight the attempts to discuss mainstream technology and contemporary consciousness and its impact on our daily lives, along with the new modes of politics, aesthetics and consciousness created during the representation of reality through technology.

BATX is an acronym standing for Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, and Xiaomi, the four biggest tech firms in China, often compared to GAMA in the United States. BATX were some of the first tech companies started in the 2000s during the rise of the Chinese technology revolution and quickly became widely used among Chinese netizens. Notably after 2015, some other tech companies like Huawei, DiDi, JD, DJI and ByteDance have also become some of the up-and-coming biggest tech giants in the industry.

Joyce Yu-Jean Lee is a visual artist working with video, photography, interactive installation and performance that combine social practice, institutional critique and activism together in an interdisciplinary practice. She is the founder of FIREWALL Internet Cafe social software consisting of a Google and Baidu dual-search engine that garnered backlash from Chinese state authorities in 2016.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Liz Fong-Jones</span> American software developer and activist

Liz Fong-Jones is a site reliability engineer and developer advocate known for labor activism with her contributions to the Never Again pledge and her role in leading Google worker organization efforts. She is the president of the board of directors of the Solidarity Fund by Coworker, which she seeded with her own money. She is Honeycomb's field Chief Technology Officer.

References

  1. 1 2 Smith, Noah (September 19, 2018). "Google's prototype Chinese search engine links searches to phone numbers". the Guardian. Retrieved September 26, 2018.
  2. 1 2 Conger, Kate; Wakabayashi, Daisuke (August 16, 2018). "Google Employees Protest Secret Work on Censored Search Engine for China" . The New York Times. Archived from the original on January 23, 2023. Retrieved September 26, 2018.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Pham, Sherisse (August 2, 2018). "Google might return to China. Here's why that's so controversial". CNN Business.
  4. 1 2 Gallagher, Ryan; Fang, Lee (September 21, 2018). "Google suppresses memo revealing plans to closely track search users in China". The Intercept.
  5. 1 2 Hollister, Sean (September 21, 2018). "Report: Google suppressed an explosive memo about its Chinese search engine". CNET.
  6. Gallagher, Ryan (December 17, 2018). "Google's Secret China Project "Effectively Ended" After Internal Confrontation". The Intercept. Retrieved December 17, 2018.
  7. Gallagher, Ryan (March 4, 2019). "Google Employees Uncover Ongoing Work on Censored China Search". The Intercept. Retrieved July 17, 2019.
  8. 1 2 "Google's Chinese search engine 'terminated'". BBC News. July 17, 2019. Retrieved July 17, 2019.
  9. Humphries, Matthew (September 17, 2018). "Report: Google Dragonfly Links Phone Numbers to Search Results". PCMag UK. Retrieved September 26, 2018.
  10. Vincent, James (August 1, 2018). "Whistleblower reveals Google's plans for censored search in China". The Verge. Retrieved October 10, 2018.
  11. 1 2 "Google wanted to launch China search engine in 'six to nine months', report says". South China Morning Post. Retrieved October 10, 2018.
  12. Lee, Dave (October 10, 2018). "Leak chips away at Google's secrecy on China". BBC News. Retrieved October 10, 2018.
  13. Bergen, Mark (August 17, 2018). "Google CEO Tells Staff China Plans Are 'Exploratory' After Backlash". Bloomberg.
  14. Campbell, Alexia Fernández (September 25, 2018). "Google's censored search engine for China is sparking a moral crisis within the company". Vox.
  15. Kelly, Heather (October 16, 2018). "Google's CEO says it's still considering a censored search engine in China". CNN Business. Retrieved November 27, 2018.
  16. Tiku, Nitasha (October 15, 2018). "Google's CEO Says Tests of Censored Chinese Search Engine Turned Out Great". WIRED. Retrieved October 16, 2018.
  17. Li, Abner (October 16, 2018). "Sundar Pichai calls Dragonfly a project to see what Google looks like in China after 8 years". 9to5Google. Retrieved December 8, 2018.
  18. "Death sparks probe into China's Baidu". BBC News. May 3, 2016. Retrieved December 12, 2018.
  19. 1 2 "Does 'don't be evil' still apply, Google?" . The Washington Post. December 4, 2018. Archived from the original on December 17, 2018. Retrieved December 8, 2018.
  20. Nieva, Richard (December 12, 2018). "Caught up in partisan bickering, Congress didn't dig into the big issues". CNET. Retrieved January 15, 2019.
  21. Gallagher, Ryan (November 29, 2018). "Google Shut Out Privacy and Security Teams From Secret China Project". The Intercept. Retrieved November 30, 2018.
  22. Nieva, Richard (November 29, 2018). "Google excluded privacy team from Dragonfly China project, report says". CNET. Retrieved December 3, 2018.
  23. 1 2 "We are Google employees. Google must drop Dragonfly". Medium. January 2, 2019. Retrieved March 2, 2020.
  24. 1 2 "Google to censor itself in China". CNN Business. January 26, 2006. Retrieved December 8, 2018.
  25. "Connect the Dots on State-Sponsored Cyber Incidents". Council on Foreign Relations. Retrieved December 8, 2018.
  26. Zetter, Kim (January 15, 2010). "Google Hack Attack Was Ultra Sophisticated, New Details Show". Wired. ISSN   1059-1028 . Retrieved December 8, 2018.
  27. 1 2 Bethge, Philip (March 30, 2010). "Google Co-Founder on Pulling out of China: 'It Was a Real Step Backward'". Spiegel Online. Retrieved December 8, 2018.
  28. Ward, Josh (March 24, 2010). "The World from Berlin: Google's Move to Hong Kong 'A Face-Saving Capitulation'". Spiegel Online. Retrieved December 8, 2018.
  29. 1 2 3 Simonite, Tom (October 19, 2018). "Google Wants China. Will Chinese Users Want Google?". Wired. ISSN   1059-1028 . Retrieved December 8, 2018.
  30. 1 2 Gallagher, Ryan (September 14, 2018). "Google China Prototype Links Searches to Phone Numbers". The Intercept. Retrieved March 2, 2020.
  31. Campbell, Alexia Fernández (August 17, 2018). "The employee backlash over Google's censored search engine for China, explained". Vox. Retrieved September 26, 2018.
  32. O'Donovan, Caroline (August 17, 2018). "Google Employees Are Organizing To Protest The Company's Secret, Censored Search Engine For China". BuzzFeed News. Retrieved September 26, 2018.
  33. Menegus, Bryan (August 16, 2018). "Here's the Letter 1,400 Google Workers Sent Leadership in Protest of Censored Search Engine for China". Gizmodo. Retrieved October 10, 2018.
  34. "Senior Google Scientist Resigns Over "Forfeiture of Our Values" in China". Gizmodo. September 13, 2018. Retrieved August 22, 2023.
  35. "Open letter: Google must not capitulate on human rights to gain access to China". Amnesty International. August 28, 2018. Retrieved December 9, 2018.
  36. Diamond, Larry; Mitchell, Anna (February 2, 2018). "China's Surveillance State Should Scare Everyone". The Atlantic. Retrieved December 9, 2018.
  37. Vigo, Julian (October 18, 2018). "Project Dragonfly And Google's Threat To Anti-Democratic Processes". Forbes. Retrieved December 9, 2018.
  38. Captain, Sean (December 3, 2018). "Meet the Google engineer getting its workers ready to strike". Fast Company. Retrieved December 9, 2018.
  39. Newton, Casey (November 30, 2018). "A looming strike over Project Dragonfly is putting new pressure on Google". The Verge. Retrieved December 9, 2018.
  40. D'Onfro, Jillian (November 29, 2018). "Google worker strike discussions on Project Dragonfly censored search". CNBC. Retrieved December 9, 2018.
  41. "Remarks by Vice President Pence on the Administration's Policy Toward China". whitehouse.gov . October 4, 2018. Retrieved October 5, 2018 via National Archives.
  42. Nichols, Shaun (October 4, 2018). "Iron Mike Pence blasts Google for its censor-happy Dragonfly Chinese search engine". The Register. Retrieved October 5, 2018.
  43. Rampton, Roberta; Alexander, David (October 4, 2018). Ricci, Andrea (ed.). "Pence says Google should halt Dragonfly app development". Reuters. Retrieved October 5, 2018.
  44. Fazzini, Kate (December 7, 2018). "Senator slams Google's censored search engine work in China". CNBC. Retrieved December 9, 2018.
  45. Ali, Idrees; Stewart, Phil; Dave, Paresh (December 6, 2018). Shumaker, Lisa (ed.). "Top U.S. general urges Google to work with military". Reuters .
  46. 1 2 Russell, Jon; Hatmaker, Taylor (November 28, 2018). "It turns out some Google staff do believe in controversial plan to re-enter China". TechCrunch. Retrieved December 9, 2018.
  47. Hu, Krystal (November 20, 2018). "Exclusive: 3 Chinese Google employees express support for censored search engine project". Yahoo! Finance . Retrieved December 9, 2018.
  48. Cuthbertson, Anthony (July 17, 2019). "Google finally says it will kill censored Chinese search engine Project Dragonfly". The Independent. Retrieved July 20, 2019.
  49. Su, Jean Baptiste. "Confirmed: Google Terminated Project Dragonfly, Its Censored Chinese Search Engine" . Forbes. Archived from the original on July 27, 2019. Retrieved March 2, 2020.