In his first congressional hearing, later this week, Google CEO Sundar Pichai will take the hot seat on Capitol Hill, where’s he expected to be grilled by lawmakers. When the House Judiciary Committee announced the hearing last week, the issue that got top billing was whether the world’s biggest search engine and its YouTube video service have a bias against conservatives. Which makes sense, given that Republicans control the House of Representatives.
But devoting a big chunk of the hearing to discussing bias would would be a mistake, experts say. Google is facing real challenges, and hearing directly from its CEO could be illuminating if lawmakers use their time wisely. After all, there’s lots for them to discuss.
In August, President Donald Trump accused Google of political bias and having a liberal bent. He tweeted that Google’s search results are “rigged,” saying the company is “suppressing voices of Conservatives.” He also tweeted a video claiming Google promoted former President Barack Obama’s State of the Union addresses every January but not his. Trump added the hashtag #StopTheBias.
Except Trump got it wrong. Google rejected his claim, noting that its home page did promote the president’s address in January. The company also said it didn’t promote either Trump’s or Obama’s address from their first years in office because those speeches aren’t technically considered State of the Union addresses.
A screenshot from the Internet Archive, which keeps a record of what appears on web domains, backed up Google.
Still, that doesn’t mean the question of anticonservative bias shouldn’t be part of the conversation. Last year, after the Trump administration launched its controversial travel ban involving seven Muslim-majority countries, The Wall Street Journal reported that Google employees discussed tweaking search results to show users how they could contribute to pro-immigration causes.
And two days after the 2016 election, Google’s leadership expressed dismay over Trump’s victory, according to a video of a companywide meeting leaked to Breitbart in September.
“Let’s face it, most people here are pretty upset and pretty sad because of the election,” Google co-founder Sergey Brin says in the video. “As an immigrant and a refugee, I find this election deeply offensive, and I’m sure many of you do too.”
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