[ad_1]
Sundar Pichai is appropriately grilled by Cicilline on Google's plans for China – and is incredibly evasive about whether he ever plans to return to the county. The full exchange is worth reading in full, below, to see how Pichai can not answer the questions asked to him.
Cicilline: are some employees currently organizing product meetings on this Chinese project? And if not, when did those end?
Pichai: We have undertaken an internal effort, but at the moment there are no plans to launch a research service in China, as I said before.
Cicilline: Are there any ongoing discussions with members of the Chinese government at the launch of this app?
Pichai: At the moment, we are not discussing the launch of a research project in China.
Cicillina: are there any ongoing discussions with members of the Chinese government about this?
Pichai: this effort at the moment is an internal effort. I am happy to be transparent to the extent that we take steps to launch a product in China.
Cicilline: And who is leading the Dragonfly effort to Google?
Pichai: Our efforts to build research are undertaken by our research teams, but these are distributed efforts. Currently it is a limited effort internally.
Cicilline: Will, Mr. Pichai, exclude the launch of an instrument for surveillance and censorship in China while you are the CEO of Google?
Pichai: Congressman, I'm committed to getting involved. One of the things that is important to us as a company is a mission declared to provide users with information, and therefore we always think that it is our duty to explore the possibilities of providing users with access to information. I have a commitment, but as I said before, we will be very considerate and we will work hard as we make progress.
