Google’s chief executive defended his company’s plan to explore a search engine tailored for users in China despite concerns that would mean complying with the country’s strict internet censors.
In his most extensive public remarks on the topic, Sundar Pichai said entering China in some ways aligns with the company’s mission to provide information to the world’s population, since one-fifth of those people reside in China. Even complying with China’s censors, he said, Google would be able to deliver search results to more than 99% of queries and in some cases deliver more helpful results than users currently get from local search engines.
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The comments, during an on stage interview Monday at a Wired technology conference in San Francisco, followed reports several weeks ago about Google’s secret China search project that sparked a backlash from human-rights advocates and Washington lawmakers, who warn the effort could aid a repressive regime.
Google, a unit of Alphabet Inc. GOOGL, -1.62% , GOOG, -1.61% also faces pressure from its own employees to only do work that adheres to the company’s values. In August, hundreds of employees signed a letter asking Google to give rank-and-file workers a voice in the ethics-review process and the ability to opt out of working on certain projects.
An expanded version of this report appears on WSJ.com.
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