Google's China Conundrum: Breaking Down Project Dragonfly

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai testified before Congress this week on a range of topics, from data privacy to Google's controversial plans to build a censored search engine for China.

Pichai characterized Project Dragonfly as more of an exploratory internal effort than as something hitting the Chinese market anytime soon. But he refused to rule out ever releasing the tool, which has been reported to include both censorship and surveillance features.

Google's interest in China isn't hard to suss out. When Google first began operating there in 2006, the country had around 137 million internet users. By the time Google was forced to shut down its censored Chinese search engine in 2010, after the Chinese government launched a cyberattack on Google and other companies targeting human-rights activists, there were close to 500 million Chinese internet users.

And when the company began working on Project Dragonfly in 2017, an effort that Pichai testified has involved more than 100 employees, there were more than 770 million Chinese internet users. That number continues to climb in 2018 as the country closes the connectivity gap between its urban and rural citizens.

Tech companies all want access to China's growing online user base. It's the same reason Facebook built a censorship tool and has spent years vying for government approval. But as increased scrutiny and public backlash on internet companies has shown, companies like Facebook and Google now have to worry not only about external criticism but also protests from their own employees.

Google employees have publicly objected to Dragonfly, with more than 1,400 employees reportedly signing a petition against the project and 700 employees making their opposition public. Five-hundred employees signed in support of Dragonfly.

As with the more than 20,000 Google employees who walked out over the company's handling of sexual harassment and those who resigned over the company's now-shuttered Project Maven AI project with the Pentagon, the tech giant has now seen significant backlash from employees anytime its projects or actions infringe on civil liberties.

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Given that China's Freedom of the Net score is 88 (where 0 is the best and 100 is the worst), Google's employees protesting Project Dragonfly have a compelling point.