‘Google CEO describes internal test with Chinese search engine as successful’

Google CEO Sundar Pichai first spoke at the Wired 25 event about its internal plans to develop a search engine for the Chinese market. According to the CEO, the trial turned out to be a success.

Wired writes that Pichai stated that the search engine could process 99 percent of searches in China and that it could provide better information than is currently available. “We are driven by our mission to provide information to everyone and China is 20 percent of the world’s population,” the site quotes him as saying.

In the interview, Pichai said: “We wanted to know what it would look like if Google had a presence in China. It’s very early days and we don’t know if we can do it in China yet, but we thought it was important to investigate. I think it’s important for us, given the importance of the market and the number of users.” It is the first time Pichai has spoken out about plans involving a Chinese search engine.

Since the first release of the plans, in which The Intercept wrote in August about an internal Dragonfly project for a censored Chinese search service, there has been a lot of buzz about Google’s plans for China. American politicians asked questions about censorship, human rights organizations asked the search giant for clarification and Google employees also asked for openness.

The Intercept published another statement about the plans in September, claiming that the search engine matches results to the user’s phone number.