Google CEO Sundar Pichai Finally Sets Date to Testify Before House

Google CEO Sundar Pichai is set to testify before the House Judiciary Committee on December 5 about political bias against conservatives and the company’s operations in China — including the censored search app “Project Dragonfly.”

The Washington Post reports that Sundar Pichai, the CEO of tech giant Google, is set to testify before the House Judiciary Committee on December 5. Pichai will be questioned on a number of topics including allegations of political bias against conservatives by the tech giant and the company’s operations in China. The hearing was confirmed by three sources to be set for the first week in December.

Both GOP lawmakers including House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and President Trump have previously accused Google of suppressing conservative news website while the President also claimed that the online search engine promotes negative articles about him. Google has denied all of these allegations repeatedly, but doubts around the search engines impartiality resulted in McCarthy requesting Pichai appear before Congress, which Pichai has finally agreed to do.

Top executives from Facebook and Twitter have already appeared before Congress, including Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, COO Sheryl Sandberg, and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. In September, Pichai and Larry Page, the leader of Google’s parent company Alphabet, chose not to attend a hearing before Congress alongside their peers from other tech firms, a move that was widely criticized at the time.

Since the executive’s refusal to appear before Congress, Google has faced a number of scandals, including a data breach which saw the user data of hundreds of thousands of Google+ users left vulnerable. The company has also faced intense scrutiny over their plans to develop a Chinese-government censored search product codenamed “Project Dragonfly.”

During a speech before the Hudson Institute, Vice President Mike Pence criticized what he believes is China’s theft of U.S. technology, urging Gooogle to take action on the issue. Pence said during the speech that other business leaders are hesitant to enter the Chinese market “if it means turning over their intellectual property or abetting Beijing’s oppression.”

Pence called on Google to listen to these other leaders and that “more must follow suit.” He also called on Google to end the development of its censored Chinese search engine project known as Dragonfly: “For example, Google should immediately end development of the ‘Dragonfly’ app that will strengthen Communist Party censorship and compromise the privacy of Chinese customers,” said Pence.

The outgoing chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Bob Goodlatte, said in an interview in September: “There’s a lot of interest in their algorithm, how those algorithms work, how those algorithms are supervised.”

 

Breitbart News will provide full coverage of Pichai’s testimony before Congress.