"Google's secret China project "effectively ended" after internal confrontation," 17 Dec 2018 

Google has been forced to shut down a data analysis system it was using to develop a censored search engine for China after members of the company’s privacy team raised internal complaints that it had been kept secret from them... Google employees working on Dragonfly had been using a Beijing-based website [265.com] to help develop blacklists for the censored search engine, which was designed to block out broad categories of information related to democracy, human rights, and peaceful protest, in accordance with strict rules on censorship in China... Members of the privacy team confronted the executives responsible for managing Dragonfly... Following a series of discussions, two sources said, Google engineers were told that they were no longer permitted to continue using the 265.com data to help develop Dragonfly, which has since had severe consequences for the project... Last week, Pichai, Google’s CEO, appeared before Congress... [and] stated that “right now” there were no plans to launch the search engine, though refused to rule it out in the future... Leaks about the plan and the extraordinary backlash that ensued both internally and externally appear to have forced company executives to shelve it at least in the short term, two sources familiar with the project said.