Meeting between Google execs and employees on the company’s China plans

Kimberly White/Reuters

• Google CEO Sundar Pichai and cofounder Sergey Brin met
  with employees during an all-hands meeting on Thursday and
  discussed reports that Google planned to launch a censored
  search engine in China.
• Pichai told staff that the company is not close to
  launching a search product in China.
• The meeting grew tense as Pichai and Brin discovered
  someone was providing real-time reports on the meeting to a
  reporter.

On Thursday, in a meeting with employees, Google’s leadership
addressed reports from earlier this month that the company had
built a censored search engine in order to once again operate in
China, according to Twitter posts from multiple reporters.

Kate Conger, a New York Times reporter posted to Twitter
what she said were comments made during the meeting by Google CEO
Sundar Pichai and Sergey Brin, one of the company’s
cofounders.

“If we were to do our mission well, we are to think
seriously about how to do more in China,” Pichai told employees,
according to The Times. “That said, we are not close to launching
a search product in China.”

Brin denied having knowledge of the program until after news
leaked and an ensuing controversy erupted, or as Brin called it
“this kerfuffle.”

A Google spokesperson was not immediately available for
comment.

The reports that Google wanted to reintroduce search inside China
is a reversal from the position the company took in 2010, when
managers pulled out of the country instead of capitulating to the
government’s demands to filter out websites and information that
China’s leaders found objectionable.

Two sources who were privy to what occurred in
Thursday’s meeting told Business Insider that Pichai only briefly
addressed — and not in any detailed way — the big question on the
minds of many at the company: Why is Google considering a return
to China? The CEO described the moves being made by the company
in that country as “exploratory.” 

When the news of a censored search engine first became public,
some Google employees were critical of management’s decision. And
earlier on Thursday, a letter  began to circulate among
staff that called on the company’s leaders to create
an “ethics review structure” to ensure transparency on
issues involving ethics. 

Some of the tension that has lingered at the company since
an earlier controversy regarding Google’s work with the military,
appeared evident at Thursday’s meeting.

The discussions became tense when Google’s leaders
discovered that someone attending the meeting or listening in
remotely was supplying live information to Conger. Brin said he
would not continue discussing China because of the leaks,
according to the sources who spoke to Business Insider.

The sources said that this was the moment when the image of
Conger’s tweets were displayed on a large screen in the room with
Pichai and Brin. One Google employee who had stood to ask a
question suddenly addressed whoever was leaking.

“F–k you,” he said. He then demanded that the person
leave.

The sources said that’s when the meeting essentially
wrapped up with many questions about Google’s relationship to
China still unanswered.

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