Google CEO Sundar Pichai bound for Washington as Trump takes aim at search engine
Jessica Guynn
SAN FRANCISCO -- Rebuked by lawmakers and slammed by President Trump, Google is on the political hot seat -- and its CEO is headed to Capitol Hill to make peace.
Earlier this month, Sundar Pichai didn't show up to a congressional hearing on state-sponsored election interference; top execs from Facebook and Twitter did. In a public scolding, the Senate Intelligence Committee left an open chair to spotlight Pichai's absence. And Republican House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy blasted Google in a tweet, saying an "invite will be on its way" to the Internet giant.
Google got the message. On Friday Pichai will meet with McCarthy and more than two dozen Republican lawmakers behind closed doors.
"I look forward to meeting with members on both sides of the aisle, answering a wide range of questions, and explaining our approach," said Pichai, who's also expected to sit down with White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow at Google's request.
Topping the agenda for McCarthy, a vocal Google critic: Charges the Internet giant does not treat conservatives fairly.
The private meeting in McCarthy's office comes the same week that Google's chief privacy officer, Keith Enright, was grilled by lawmakers at a Senate online privacy hearing on the company exploring a new search product for China, which it hasn't launched.
“Google has a lot of questions to answer about reports of bias in its search results, violations of user privacy, anti-competitive behavior, and business dealings with repressive regimes like China,” McCarthy said in a statement.
Pichai is expected to appear at a House Judiciary Committee hearing after the midterm elections in November. "This meeting will inform the Judiciary Committee hearing that will be scheduled later this fall," McCarthy said.
Dan Schnur, professor at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School of Communications, says Google blundered by not showing up for the Senate hearing but says the company realized that "at some point they were going to have to kiss the ring."
"He's going to get a roasting when he goes back to Washington, but in Washington you do get a second chance to make a first impression," he said. "Even if there are some hard feelings, if they present themselves in a cooperative manner going forward, they should be just fine."
Until recently lawmakers had focused their criticism on another tech giant, Facebook, after a series of privacy blunders and the unchecked spread of online propaganda by Russia agents during and after the 2016 presidential election.
Now Google, which dominates the search business around the world and whose YouTube video service has come under fire for spreading disinformation and conspiracy theories, faces tougher scrutiny of its business practices and new threats of regulation.
Google was frequently mentioned during a meeting Tuesday with Attorney General Jeff Sessions and state law enforcement officials exploring potential antitrust and data privacy investigations.
Attacks on Google have escalated in recent weeks. Trump and other prominent Republicans have accused Google and other tech companies of suppressing and censoring conservative voices and viewpoints. Last month, Trump claimed search results for "Trump News" were "RIGGED, for me & others, so that almost all stories & news is BAD."
McCarthy had also chastised Google for search results, tweeting that results that incorrectly said the ideology of the California Republican Party included "Nazism" were a "disgrace." Google blamed "vandalism" at Wikipedia.
Google says it does not rank search results to manipulate political sentiment. But last week the "Wall Street Journal" reported that Google employees debated ways to alter search results to direct users to pro-immigration organizations and to contact lawmakers and government agencies after Trump's immigration travel ban against predominantly Muslim countries. And right-wing news site Breitbart obtained an internal video following Trump's election in 2016 in which executives of Google parent Alphabet expressed dismay at the outcome, adding new fuel to charges by the political right that Google is biased against conservatives.
McCarthy, who has increased his criticism of Google in recent weeks, took aim at Google again when it failed to send Alphabet CEO Larry Page or Pichai to testify before a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on state-sponsored election interference. Google had offered to send Kent Walker, its senior vice president for global affairs and a point person on election interference, but the offer was rejected by the committee. Facebook's chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey took questions from senators at the hearing next to an empty chair marked "Google."
Censorship charges against left-leaning Silicon Valley have been raised in multiple hearings on Capitol Hill and have become come a conservative rallying cry ahead of the midterm elections. They are also the subject of a new documentary, "The Creepy Line," by conservative author Peter Schweizer. A recent poll from the Media Research Center conducted by McLaughlin & Associates found that 65 percent of self-described conservatives believe that social media companies intentionally censor the political right.
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