Google CEO Sundar Pichai to Meet US Lawmakers Amid Criticism of Bias Against Conservatives

Google's chief executive officer Sundar Pichai is on Capitol Hill this week to face questions from Republican lawmakers who accuse the company of being biased against conservatives and have raised a litany of other concerns.

House of Representatives Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a Republican who has repeatedly criticised Google, is hosting a meeting of more than two dozen Republican lawmakers on Friday with Pichai.

"Google has a lot of questions to answer about reports of bias in its search results, violations of user privacy, anticompetitive behaviour and business dealings with repressive regimes like China," McCarthy said in a statement.

Pichai will also meet with White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow on Friday to discuss national and international issues, a White House official confirmed.

Republicans want to question Google, the search engine of Alphabet, about whether its search algorithms are influenced by human bias. They also want to probe it on privacy issues, search dominance, classification of news and opinion results and operations in countries with human rights violations.

Pichai said in a statement he plans to meet with both Democrats and Republicans, "answering a wide range of questions, and explaining our approach."

Pichai wrote in an internal email last week that suggestions that Google would interfere in search results for political reasons were "absolutely false. We do not bias our products to favour any political agenda."

The Wall Street Journal on September 20 reported, citing internal emails, that Google employees had brainstormed ways to alter search functions to counter the Trump administration's controversial 2017 travel ban. The Journal said Google did not go through with the ideas that were brainstormed.

Google came under criticism for refusing to send a top executive to a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on September 5 about efforts to counteract foreign influence in US elections and political discourse. Facebook's chief operating officer and Twitter's chief executive testified at the hearing, where an empty chair was pointedly left for Google after the committee rejected Google's top lawyer as a witness.

Pichai is expected to meet Thursday with House Democratic Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, congressional aides said.

Google has faced questions from lawmakers on whether it intends to resume operating its search engine in China. Google described its "work on search" for China as "exploratory" and "not close to launching."

McCarthy said the House Judiciary Committee plans a hearing after the November elections with Google.

Google's chief privacy officer testified before a Senate panel on Wednesday and in written testimony said the company acknowledged that it had "made mistakes in the past" on privacy.

Earlier this week, the Justice Department met with state attorneys general to focus on the need to protect consumer privacy when big technology companies amass vast troves of data, but came to no immediate conclusions, Reuters reported.

© Thomson Reuters 2018