China: Google has closed Project Dragonfly

A Google spokesperson has told a US Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that it has terminated its controversial censored Chinese search engine. Employees previously working on the project have been reassigned.

Dragonfly attracted criticism as a potential means through which Chinese authorities could censor web content and monitor citizens' behaviour online. The search application would automatically filter out sites blocked by China’s so called ‘great firewall’ including the BBC and Wikipedia. This would include filtering out any political opposition material.

For a deeper read on how the development of Project Dragonfly was made public and uncovered by its investigators, see the story on The Intercept.

Sources: BBC; Endgadget.