Google backing out of China partnerships, says Senator Mark Warner

Google’s chief executive officer told U.S. Senator Mark Warner that the company has ended some partnerships in China, the lawmaker said Tuesday on Bloomberg Television. The search giant’s ties to China were in the spotlight this week after technology investor Peter Thiel suggested on Sunday that the U.S. government probe Google’s “seemingly treasonous” work. President Donald Trump said he wanted the U.S. attorney general to look into the claims.

Google pulled its search engine from mainland China in 2010. But the company began developing a separate prototype Chinese search service as early as 2016. Reports of the project, called Dragonfly, surfaced shortly after Google nixed a U.S. military contract, drawing criticism from the Pentagon and U.S. politicians from both parties. Earlier this year, Google said it had moved staff off of Dragonfly, and on Tuesday Karan Bhatia, Google’s policy chief, said the project was “terminated.”