Google is taking on an unlikely role: wedding planner. 
 
 Just in time for Valentine's Day, Google has rolled out a dedicated site where consumers can create a wedding website, edit photos and plan their wedding using wedding-specific templates in Google Sites, Google Docs and Picnik. The company announced the move today on its official Google blog. 
 
 Google teamed up with wedding planner Michelle Rago for the templates, and Rago also provides tips to the soon-to-be-betrothed. To spread the word, Google is also hosting a wedding sweepstakes offering a prize of $25,000 and the chance to get Rago to help plan your wedding. 
 
 The site is the latest attempt by Google to insinuate itself into consumers' lifestyles. In 2008, Google launched Google Health, which is designed to let users organize, monitor, track and use health information on the site. But there's a thin line between providing helpful information and invading privacy: In 2009, Google Health partnered with CVS to provide patients online access to their prescription drug history via their Google Health accounts, raising issues about Google's access to sensitive personal information. ||||| The planned move represents a dramatic shift in Google’s policy on China and will mark the first time in almost a decade that the internet giant has operated its search engine in the country. 
 
 Teams of programmers and engineers at Google have created a custom Android app, different versions of which have been named “Maotai” and “Longfei.” The app has already been demonstrated to the Chinese government; the finalized version could be launched in the next six to nine months, pending approval from Chinese officials. 
 
 The project – code-named Dragonfly – has been underway since spring of last year, and accelerated following a December 2017 meeting between Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai and a top Chinese government official, according to internal Google documents and people familiar with the plans. 
 
 Google is planning to launch a censored version of its search engine in China that will blacklist websites and search terms about human rights, democracy, religion, and peaceful protest, The Intercept can reveal. 
 
 Google’s search service cannot currently be accessed by most internet users in China because it is blocked by the country’s so-called Great Firewall. The app Google is building for China will comply with the country’s strict censorship laws, restricting access to content that Xi Jinping’s Communist Party regime deems unfavorable. 
 
 The Chinese government blocks information on the internet about political opponents, free speech, sex, news, and academic studies. It bans websites about the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, for instance, and references to “anticommunism” and “dissidents.” Mentions of books that negatively portray authoritarian governments, like George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm, have been prohibited on Weibo, a Chinese social media website. The country also censors popular Western social media sites like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, as well as American news organizations such as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. 
 
 Documents seen by The Intercept, marked “Google confidential,” say that Google’s Chinese search app will automatically identify and filter websites blocked by the Great Firewall. When a person carries out a search, banned websites will be removed from the first page of results, and a disclaimer will be displayed stating that “some results may have been removed due to statutory requirements.” Examples cited in the documents of websites that will be subject to the censorship include those of British news broadcaster BBC and the online encyclopedia Wikipedia. 
 
 The search app will “blacklist sensitive queries.” 
 
 The search app will also “blacklist sensitive queries” so that “no results will be shown” at all when people enter certain words or phrases, the documents state. The censorship will apply across the platform: Google’s image search, automatic spell check and suggested search features will incorporate the blacklists, meaning that they will not recommend people information or photographs the government has banned. 
 
 Within Google, knowledge about Dragonfly has been restricted to just a few hundred members of the internet giant’s 88,000-strong workforce, said a source with knowledge of the project. The source spoke to The Intercept on condition of anonymity, as they were not authorized to contact the media. The source said that they had moral and ethical concerns about Google’s role in the censorship, which is being planned by a handful of top executives and managers at the company with no public scrutiny. 
 
 “I’m against large companies and governments collaborating in the oppression of their people, and feel like transparency around what’s being done is in the public interest,” the source said, adding that they feared “what is done in China will become a template for many other nations.” 
 
 Patrick Poon, a Hong Kong-based researcher with human rights group Amnesty International, told The Intercept that Google’s decision to comply with the censorship would be “a big disaster for the information age.” 
 
 “This has very serious implications not just for China, but for all of us, for freedom of information and internet freedom,” said Poon. “It will set a terrible precedent for many other companies who are still trying to do business in China while maintaining the principles of not succumbing to China’s censorship. The biggest search engine in the world obeying the censorship in China is a victory for the Chinese government – it sends a signal that nobody will bother to challenge the censorship any more.” 
 
 “I’m against large companies and governments collaborating in the oppression of their people.” 
 
 It is unclear whether Google will eventually launch a desktop version of its censored China search platform. For now, the company is focused on initially rolling out the Android app, which a large portion of China’s population will be able to access. Researchers estimate that more than 95 percent of people accessing the internet in China use mobile devices to go online, and Android is by far the most popular mobile operating system in the country, with 80 percent of the market share. 
 
 The documents seen by The Intercept suggest that Google will operate the search app as part of a “joint venture” with an unnamed partner company, which will presumably be based in China. However, much of the work on the Dragonfly project is being carried out at Google’s Mountain View headquarters in California, about 14 miles northwest of San Jose, the heart of Silicon Valley. Other teams participating in the project are based out of Google offices in New York, San Francisco, Sunnyvale, Santa Barbara, Cambridge, Washington, D.C., Shanghai, Beijing, and Tokyo. 
 
 Previously, between 2006 and 2010, Google had maintained a censored version of its search engine in China. At the time, the company faced severe criticism in the U.S. over its compliance with the Chinese government’s policies. 
 
 During a February 2006 congressional hearing that focused on the activities of American technology companies in China, members of the House International Relations Committee called Google a “functionary of the Chinese government” and accused it of “abhorrent actions” for participating in censorship. “Google has seriously compromised its ‘don’t be evil’ policy,” declared Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J. “Indeed, it has become evil’s accomplice.” 
 
 The controversy eventually became too much for Google. In March 2010, it announced that it was pulling its search service out of China. In a blog post published at the time, the company cited Chinese government efforts to limit free speech, block websites, and hack Google computer systems as reasons why it “could no longer continue censoring our results.” 
 
 Sergey Brin, Google’s co-founder, was born in the Soviet Union and seemed particularly sensitive to concerns around censorship, having had personal experience under a repressive regime. After Google ceased its search service in 2010, Brin said that the company’s objection related to “forces of totalitarianism,” and added that he hoped the decision to pull the search platform out of the country would help lead to a “more open internet.” 
 
 “Companies operating in China must be prepared to turn over user data to security agencies.” 
 
 Since then, however, censorship and surveillance in China has become more pervasive. In 2016, the country’s government passed a new cybersecurity law, which Human Rights Watch said “strengthens censorship, surveillance, and other controls over the internet.” The government is using new automated systems to monitor and censor the internet, and it has cracked down on privacy technologies that Chinese people were using to circumvent the restrictions. 
 
 “It has been a requirement that companies operating in China must be prepared to police their users and turn over user data to security agencies upon request,” said Ron Deibert, director of Citizen Lab, an internet research group based at the University of Toronto. “We have also found overall that internet censorship [in China] is evolving towards less transparency, with less notification to users when messages are censored or removed across all platforms.” 
 
 Despite the continued repression, opinions have changed at the highest levels of Google. China now has more than 750 million internet users, equivalent to the entire population of Europe. It therefore represents a potentially massive revenue stream for the internet giant, which is likely a factor in its decision to relaunch the search platform in the country. ||||| Google is changing its privacy policy Thursday, a move that is causing a lot of anxiety among Internet activists and some users.The changes in effect allow the world's largest Internet company to collect information about its users across all its products, services and websites and store them in one place. The idea, Google says, is to create a comprehensive portrait of its users so it can offer more personalized services."In short, we'll treat you as a single user across all our products, which will mean a simpler, more intuitive Google experience," the company wrote in a Jan. 24 blog post that announced the changes.The changes won't be noticeable immediately, and Google's websites and services will function like they always have. But privacy advocates (and some European governments) are worried that with the policy changes, Google will know more about who you are, who you talk to, what you watch, where you go, and perhaps most disturbingly — what you like to buy— than any one company should know.If you are among the hand-wringers, take heart. There are some simple steps you can take to keep Google from painting too accurate a portrait of your online habits.1. Don't log in to a Google account when you go online. Google's privacy changes mostly affect people who have a Google account such as Gmail or Google+. But even if you do have a Google account, you can still use plenty of Google's services, including YouTube , Search and Maps, without logging in first. The company may still show you targeted ads based on search terms, but at least that wart cream you just bought on CVS.com won't be linked to you forever.2. Use another search engine. If you don't like the fact that Google is keeping tabs on what you are looking for, you can always try another search engine when scouring the Internet for stories on Angelina Jolie and her leg. Even better, you can rotate among a number of search engines so that no one company has a complete picture of what (or who) you like to look for online.3. Turn off the setting that allows Google to record your search history. Google has made it very simple to pause, edit or remove your search history via http://www.google.com/history. If you clear your search history, your search terms no longer will be associated with your account but still may be associated with your browser for up to 18 months, according to a Google spokeswoman.4. Take your Google data and head for the hills. In the spirit of "being big without being evil," Google created the Data Liberation Front, a website that teaches people how to export data from some key Google platforms like Google Docs and Gmail so you can quit Google without leaving all your treasured documents and emails behind.You can find it by, well, googling Data Liberation Front.
– Google has already enmeshed itself in your email, your mapping needs, your book collection … why not your wedding as well? The search giant announced Google for Weddings yesterday on its official blog. Wedding planners, watch out: The site will allow users to do everything from organizing guests lists and schedules to creating a wedding website to making save-the-date cards. (The templates were actually designed with the help of "renowned" wedding planner Michelle Rago.) Mashable notes this isn’t the first time Google has created such a personal venture: In 2008, it launched Google Health, which let users monitor their health information online. But that hit a controversial snag when Google teamed up with CVS to provide patients with access to their prescription history via Google Health, causing some to wonder if Google had too much access to sensitive information. (Click for more in the modern world of weddings.)