Earlier in the day, Pichai testified before the US House Judiciary Committee on a wide range of topics, including potential political bias on the company’s platform, transparency, and China’s privacy practices.
"Right now we have no plans to launch in China, we do not have a search product there," Pichai said on Tuesday when answering the question regarding Google’s search engine for China, known as Dragonfly. "Our core mission is to provide users access to information, and getting access to information is an important human right."
An Internet search engine app Dragonfly is designed to be compatible with China’s state censorship provisions that aim to control the Internet content and all media capable of reaching a wide audience.
In a letter published earlier in the day, Senator Marco Rubio said that Pinchai should stop his company from developing a censored version of its search engine in China because it would risk making Google complicit in China’s human rights abuses and its regime of censorship.
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A number of human rights groups around the world have also urged Google to halt the development of Dragonfly.
Google publicly exited the Chinese market in 2010, citing concerns about the repression of freedom of expression online, however, the company has been planning to re-enter that market by launching Dragonfly.
