Google confirms a censored Chinese search engine, tests for which are going great

Project Dragonfly is real after all. Google CEO **Sundar Pichai** has put all the speculations around the censored version of its search engine for China to rest. On the 15 October Wired 25 conference, he confirmed that the company was testing the search engine and that the tests were going very well. He said that the project’s ability to offer the world more information is what is driving Google to make its way into China. [caption id=“attachment_4985681” align=“alignnone” width=“1280”] Sundar Pichai, Chief Executive Officer of Google. Image: Google[/caption] “We are compelled by our mission [to] provide information to everyone, and [China is] 20 percent of the world’s population,” he said. The Intercept on 1 August reported that Google plans to launch a version of its search engine in China that will block some websites and search terms. The search engine would mark its return to a market it abandoned eight years ago on censorship concerns. Commenting on the search engine’s exit from the market, he said that Google felt “obliged to think hard about this problem and take a longer-term view.” Later that month, Pichai reportedly did **reveal** that the search engine was at an exploratory stage, while the company continued to face a backlash from its employees. With Pichai’s confirmation, it appears that the Google employees will no longer be able to protest against the move if they wanted to.