Facing backlash from employees for its reported plan to enter China with a censored version of its search engine, Google CEO Sundar Pichai addressed them in an internal meeting and informed that the project, called Dragonfly, was at an exploratory stage, the media reported.

Pichai also addressed the controversy surrounding the secrecy of the project, BuzzFeed News reported late on Thursday. "I think there are a lot of times when people are in exploratory stages where teams are debating and doing things, so sometimes being fully transparent at that stage can cause issues," the Google CEO was quoted as saying.