Relevance

GS 3 || Science & Technology || Information and Communication Technology || Internet

Why in News?:

• Google is experiencing a “moral and ethical” crisis. That’s the view of hundreds of employees at the tech company, who is protesting the development of a censored search engine for internet users in China.

Controversy over dragonfly search engine:

• Dragonfly is an Internet search engine app being prototyped by Google that is designed to be compatible with China’s state censorship provisions.
• Unlike a previous search engine designed by Google for use in China, Dragonfly would not notify users that results or search terms have been censored.

Risks and rewards of dragonfly:

• Since March 2010, when Google stopped servicing China via Google.cn, China’s internet user population has increased by 70%. It currently clocks in at 772 million users, but could grow to 1.4 billion users with time.
• This means that, for Google, who makes most of its revenue from advertisements run on its search engines, the potential profits of re-entering the Chinese search engine market are enormous.
• Rise of the domestic Chinese search engines – Baidu is considered as Google’s counterpart in China.