Google’s Vice President of Public Policy, Karan Bhatia, told members of the Senate Judiciary that the company’s Project Dragonfly has been “terminated” and employees working on it have been reassigned. Dragonfly was Google’s prototype Chinese search engine that was widely reported to involve huge concessions to state censors and protested by its own staff.

Dragonfly was criticized because it had the potential to censor web content and monitor citizens’ behavior online. The project was reported to have been terminated late last year but rumors that it remained active persisted

Google withdrew many of its services from China in 2010 since Chinese authorities could enforce surveillance and censorship. But in the past few years, Google has been reported to be eyeing a comeback as competitors were trying to get an inroad in this market. It has continued to maintain staff there working in hardware and sales.