GoogleTo Launch “Safe Search Kids” Project: Porn-Proof And Kid-Friendly Search Engine

With thousands of searches that Google is processing every second or around 1.2 trillion queries a year, it is safe to assume that many of those searches (even with adult contents) are made by children. The tech company heads its way to creating child-friendly versions of the popular Chrome products that it offers. Google will try to put a more wholesome edge against Yahoo, Mozilla and other popular search engines.

This will be very good news for parents out there who like to protect their children from all the sex and violence that they can easily pick-up via the internet. The concept of having a wholesome internet experience does sound a very good and positive idea. However, for Google, it will be a challenging endeavor.

According to Google's vice president for engineering Pavni Diwani, she actually used her own children as motivation for this specific project that she is currently handling. She mentioned that she doesn't want kids to hide behind their parents back whenever they try to sneak into a site in the internet that is just not yet right for their age. The Google executive refused to mention a timeline or product specifics and features of the company's own "Lil Guy Kidz" version. Aside from showing the quite generic screenshot of a child-friendly search engine, which was simply and rather not so creatively named as "Safe Search Kids", Gizmodo reports.

Apparently, it was just a sneak-peak of Google's latest offer and more details of the product might be revealed anytime. But based on USA Today, the Federal Trade Commission's Children's Online Privacy Protection Act has already fined 20 companies within its 15 years of history of protecting young users from unfit information without parental consent. Last September, Yelp was fined US$450,000 for its failure to implement a functional age screen in its ratings app.

Maneesha Mithal, the associate director for FTC's privacy and identity protection division explained they are working to get kids protected and at the same time promoting business compliance. Mithal also said that the children's online privacy law has been updated many times in the past decade to adapt to the changes and growth of tech trends.

On the other hand, services like Facebook and Snapchat do not allow people under the right age limit to its services. But the kids nowadays can simply play around the age requirement making them create their own personal accounts and thus exposing them to uncontrollable amount of information in the internet.

The biggest challenge that Google will be facing is making services that are child-friendly yet appealing for the modern kids out there. Otherwise, the giant company will have a hard time enticing kids to switch from the regular search engine to the more wholesome "Safe Search Kids" that Google plans to offer.