New Delhi, March 25 Rajya Sabha Congress MP Neeraj Dangi on Wednesday made a strong case for India to develop its own indigenous internet search engine to reduce dependence on foreign companies, such as Google, and strengthen digital sovereignty.
Raising the issue during the Zero Hour in the House, the Congress MP said the situation in India is concerning, as the data of 1.4 billion people is mostly collected and analysed through foreign search engines.
This poses risks to privacy and cybersecurity, he said.
Dangi said countries like China, Russia, France, South Korea, the Czech Republic, and even Vietnam have their own indigenous search engines.
These nations, he said, have developed search engines that are more popular in their respective countries than Google. These indigenous search engines have bolstered their digital sovereignty.
He cautioned that in the future, if tensions escalate between India and the US, services like Google, YouTube, Gmail, and Android updates could be shut down.
"Just as the Strait of Hormuz is a strategic bottleneck, Google and Microsoft have become our digital bottlenecks. The Strait of Hormuz is a warning signal. If we do not develop our own search engine, cloud, and software, then any future geopolitical pressure, a trade war or sanctions between the US and India can put us in digital trouble," he said.
Dangi recalled that following EU sanctions, Microsoft had stopped cloud services of an Indian refinery in 2025.
He urged the government to take initiative in this regard.
He also asked the government to issue a white paper on the issue and unveil a roadmap for the development of a search engine.