Is there anybody here who can even venture a GUESS who Google can do that?
If the search project launches, I believe Google is planning on partnering with Tencent for distribution.
Google was using 265.com to collect end user search queries before passing them onto Baidu & then they compared the search results from their internal Google ranking algorithms vs the results which were returned by Baidu, removing the sites Baidu had filtered.
https://theintercept.com/2018/08/08/google-censorship-china-blacklist/ search queries entered on 265.com are redirected to Baidu, the most popular search engine in China and Google’s main competitor in the country.
It appears that Google has used 265.com as a de facto honeypot for market research, storing information about Chinese users’ searches before sending them along to Baidu.
They were basically doing an end around of tracking end user behavior to copy Baidu search results, sort of the same stuff that Search Engine Land ran an anti-Bing report on years ago when Bing was using Internet Explorer user data for longtail searches with few actual search results or end user queries to derive any sort of meaningful search result set from.
When Bing did it, SEL trashed it as unethical sleaze.
https://searchengineland.com/google-bing-is-cheating-copying-our-search-results-62914When Google does it is an innovative solution to a tough technical problem.