Google CEO Sundar Pichai told the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law on Wednesday that the company faces intense competition, and that “new competitors emerge every day.”
“Just as America’s technology leadership is not inevitable, Google’s continued success is not guaranteed,” Pichai said. “New competitors emerge every day, and today users have more access to information than ever before. Competition drives us to innovate, and it also leads to better products, lower choices, and more choices for everyone.”
Pichai’s testimony came as members of both parties expressed concerns about the dominance of Google and other big technology companies. Google dominates search traffic, for example, accounting for roughly 90% of searches.
Pichai did not address breaking news that his company had suppressed the search results of Breitbart News and other conservative news websites — “purging Breitbart content from search results since the 2016 election,” according to Breitbart News’ Allum Bokhari.
Subcommittee Ranking Member Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) noted the story in his introductory statement, as well as the long history of Google and other big tech companies in suppressing conservative news websites and conservatives’ freedom of speech in general.
Suppression by Google is effective precisely because Google faces so little competition in the market for search engines.
In 2018, Breitbart News released a video from a Google meeting with employees after the 2016 election, in which executives promised to resist President-elect Donald Trump in the 2020 election.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His new book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.