Senators slam Google over ‘China search engine’

Bloomberg

A group of Republican and Democratic senators slammed Alphabet Inc.’s Google over reports it is developing a censored version of its search engine for the Chinese market. China critic Senator Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, was joined by five other lawmakers on a letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai demanding answers about the proposed “Dragonfly” search engine.
“If true, this reported plan is deeply troubling and risks making Google complicit in human rights abuses related to China’s rigorous censorship regime,” the letter says.
“It is a coup for the Chinese government and Communist Party to force Google—the biggest search engine in the world—to comply with their onerous censorship requirements, and sets a worrying precedent for other companies seeking to do business in China without compromising their core values.”
Rubio has emerged as a strident critic of China. He voted this week against the annual defense policy bill because it didn’t include stringent punishment of Chinese telecommunication firm ZTE Corp. for violating U.S. sanctions by selling technology to North Korea.