Google CEO Sundar Pichai wins kudos for testimony to Congress

Public interviews can be difficult, especially when the questioners take an adversarial position—or have little grasp of the subject matter.

Google’s head honcho, Sundar Pichai, made his debut before Congress on Tuesday, facing a wide range of inquiries, some more relevant than others, and some openly hostile—especially those about perceived bias in the platform’s algorithms.

The Capitol Hill grilling came as Google (and other big tech companies) wrap up a rough year of crises and recriminations. Google has seen criticism from employees force its hand, as well as public backlash to plans to offer a censored search engine in China and its handling of sexual harassment claims at home.

Beyond the perceived political bias in Google’s search products, lawmakers were interested in learning about data collection and use and the company’s plans for the Chinese market.

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Pichai spent much of his testimony defending Google’s status as nonpartisan.

NPR wrote:

Time and again, Republican lawmakers pressed Pichai on allegations of political bias in search results on Google and its video subsidiary YouTube. In a few instances, they suggested that some Google engineers might be manipulating the results to sideline views that are conservative or supportive of President Trump.

Google has long denied this, and Pichai did so repeatedly over almost four hours in front of the House Judiciary Committee.

"We use a robust methodology to reflect what is being said about any given topic at any particular time," he said. "It is in our interest to make sure we reflect what's happening out there in the best objective manner possible. I can commit to you and I can assure you, we do it without regards to political ideology. Our algorithms do it with no notion of political sentiment."

However, some lawmakers posed pointed questions about how Google collects user data—and what it does with it.

NPR continued:

Rep. Doug Collins, R-Ga., zoomed in on the scale of data gathering by Google, as one of the tech giants whose business model relies on the sale of advertising using the vast knowledge about people who use their platforms or devices. He quizzed Pichai on a few specific data points:

Rep. Collins: Do you or do you not collect identifiers like name, age or address? Yes or no.
Google's Pichai: If you're creating an account, yes — and using an account, yes.
Collins: Specific search histories when a person types something into a search bar.
Pichai: If you have search history turned on, yes.
Collins: Device identifiers like IP address or IMEI.
Pichai: Depending on the situation, we could be collecting it, yes.
Collins: GPS signals, Wi-Fi signals, Bluetooth beacons.
Pichai: Would depend on the specifics, but there may be situations, yes.
[...]
Collins: Contents of emails and Google documents.
Pichai: We store the data, but we don't read or look at ...
Collins: But you have access to them.
Pichai: As a company we have access to them, yes.

Other lawmakers asked off-topic questions, but Pichai offered to help anyway.

[…] Google CEO Sundar Pichai got particularly unlucky at a hearing in the House Judiciary Committee today, when Rep. Steve King (R-IA) asked Pichai to explain why his daughter’s iPhone was acting strangely.

“I have a seven-year-old granddaughter who picked up her phone during the election, and she’s playing a little game, the kind of game a kid would play,” King told Pichai. “And up on there pops a picture of her grandfather. And I’m not going to say into the record what kind of language was used around that picture of her grandfather, but I’d ask you: how does that show up on a seven-year-old’s iPhone, who’s playing a kid’s game?”

Pichai hesitated. “Congressman, the iPhone is made by a different company. And so, you know, I mean...”

King, undeterred, decided that the brand of the phone wasn’t really important. “It might have been an Android. It’s just, it was a hand-me-down of some kind,” he said.

Unable to explain why a secondhand phone potentially made by a competing company would have displayed a random notification, Pichai offered to get back to the lawmaker. “You know, I’m happy to follow up when I understand the specifics. There may be an application which was being used which had a notification. But I’m happy to understand it better and clarify it for you.”

Pichai was unable to convince some lawmakers that Google’s algorithms are unbiased.

The Washington Post wrote:

Rep. Steve Chabot (R-Ohio) complained that when he googled the Republican health-care bill or the GOP tax cuts the first several pages listed negative articles. “How do you explain this apparent bias on Google’s part against conservative points of view, against conservative policies? Is it just the algorithm, or is there more happening there?” Chabot asked.

“Congressman, I understand the frustration of seeing negative news, and, you know, I see it on me,” Pichai offered. “What is important here is we use the robust methodology to reflect what is being said about any given topic at any particular time. And we try to do it objectively, using a set of rubrics. It is in our interest to make sure we reflect what’s happening out there in the best objective manner possible. I can commit to you, and I can assure you, we do it without regards to political ideology. Our algorithms have no notion of political sentiment in it.”

But Chabot wasn’t having it. He told Pichai that conservatives believe Google is “picking winners and losers in political discourse.”

“There’s a lot of people that think what I’m saying here is happening,” Chabot said. “And I think it’s happening.”

On Google’s future in China, Pichai struck a more forceful tone.

NPR reported:

"Right now, there are no plans for us to launch a search product in China," Pichai said repeatedly. The response indicated that the plan might change in the future, though Pichai said the company would be transparent with Congress about that.

Pichai confirmed that the project was underway for a while and at one point involved more than 100 people. "We explored what a search could look like if it were to be launched in a country like China," he said.

This would have marked a return of a censored version of Google to China, which the company exited in 2010 after tensions with Beijing and a backlash in the United States. The company has been facing an outcry over the work on a censored search product since it was first revealed by the website The Intercept in August.

On Twitter, users praised Pichai:

Less than 20 mins in and Sundar Pichai is already more forthcoming, amenable and agreeable than Mark Zuckerberg in his Congressional Testimony.

— Karan Gera (@BrownKemosabe) December 11, 2018

Others suggested members of Congress don’t quite understand the subject matter:

The testimony with @sundarpichai was like watching grandparents call their grandchildren for help with new gadgets. I hope we get more people like @Ocasio2018 to help us with these new iPhones that #google is making.

— Trevor Hough (@trevordhough) December 12, 2018

However, some said the testimony wasn’t enough to allay consumer fears.

The Street reported:

"Sundar Pichai's first appearance before Congress went as expected, which is to say not very well," said Shane Green, CEO of data management app Digi.me. "As mild-mannered and thoughtful as he appeared, he simply wasn't going to win any points from the members of the House Judiciary Committee on the issue of transparency, which remains the Achilles heel of Google. The black box nature of so much of what they do and making slippery statements like 'Google does not sell personal data' results in people assuming the worst."

[…]"Numerous members of Congress specifically asked Mr. Pichai how Google's data collection in regard to location tracking works, and even if switched off in privacy settings, if location information is still being collected," noted Dimitri Sirota, CEO of BigID, which helps companies with data privacy compliance. "Although polite and soft spoken in his responses, it was clear that Mr. Pichai did not have the answers to mitigate these concerns, and he did nothing to slow the inevitable -- Federal regulation curtailing the way companies obtain, use, govern and account for personal information of users."

When asked whether he felt the U.S. needed federal data laws similar to Europe's GDPR, Pichai did say he thought the industry might be "better off with more of an overarching data protection framework for users."

What do you think of Pichai’s performance, PR Daily readers?

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