Google has come under pressure from 14 human rights organisations in the US to drop its plan to launch a censored version of its search engine in China.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin has claimed that he had no knowledge of a plan to build a censored search engine for the Chinese market before it was leaked to media. His claim was made during an employees' meeting that ended in an anti-climax after it was discovered that someone was leaking the proceedings to a reporter who was live-tweeting it.

Internal protests are growing at Google, with employees questioning the company's leaders over a move to launch a censored version of its search engine in China.