Word that Google is crafting a search engine to meet China's draconian censorship rules has sparked widespread employee anger at the company which has responded by limiting workers' access to documents about the project, a report has said.
Google was scurrying to stop leaks and quell outrage inside the company over what had been a stealth project prior to a report this week by news website The Intercept.
"Everyone's access to documents got turned off, and is being turned on [on a] document-by-document basis," a source told the news site yesterday.
"There's been total radio silence from leadership, which is making a lot of people upset and scared... Our internal meme site and Google Plus are full of talk, and people are a.n.g.r.y."
"We provide a number of mobile apps in China, such as Google Translate and Files Go, help Chinese developers, and have made significant investments in Chinese companies like JD.com," spokesman Taj Meadows told AFP when news of Dragonfly broke. "But we don't comment on speculation about future plans."