Washington, Aug 2: Internet giant Google is eyeing a re-entry into the Chinese market via a censored version of its worldwide search engine. According to reports, the company is preparing a version of the search engine which would block the content blacklisted by the Communist Party of China, while allowing the country's populace to connect with the remainder of the worldwide web through the Google search engine.

The development comes 8 years after Google was blocked in China for not adhering to the censorship guidelines issued by the Chinese government. The company's co-founder Sergey Brin had then lauded the decision to exit citing his early life in the Soviet Union where freedom of speech was crippled under the authoritarian laws.

While Google has declined to comment, top company sources while speaking to The New York Times said developers are working towards building a sanitised version of the search engine, as per the whims of the Chinese government.

Officials in Beijing, however, have called such reports untrue. But what gives credence to the development is a claim by top gadget-reporting site The Intercept claiming that Google is preparing a news aggregation app for China, which would mark the company's first business operation in the totalitarian nation in the past decade. The news app would be modelled on the lines of Top Buzz - the only exception being that it would exclude content blacklisted by the government.

GreatFire, a China-based organisation which provides netizens in the nation alternative routes to access the unrestricted worldwide web services, said Google's sanitised search engine would be the "final nail in the coffin of internet freedom" in China.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Aug 02, 2018 07:52 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).