Google's Congressional Hearing Highlights In 11 Minutes

Our only witness today is Mr. Sundar Pichai. Mr. Pichai is the Chief Executive Officer of Google. Chairman Goodlatte, Ranking Member Nadler, Distinguished Members of the Committee, Thank you for the opportunity to be here today. More than 90% of all Internet searches take place on Google or its subsidiary, YouTube, and they are curating what we see. Google has long faced criticism for manipulating search results to censor conservatives. Conservative individuals and organizations have had their pro-Trump content tagged as hate speech or had their content reduced in search results. So what are you going to improve that situation? Congressman, thanks for the question. If I may, some of the studies you mentioned, we have investigated those. There are other studies which have looked at it. We have found issues with the methodology and the sample size and so on. But let me step back and say, providing users with high-quality, accurate, and trusted information is sacrosanct to us. It's what our principles are and our business interests, our natural long-term incentives are aligned with that. We want to serve users everywhere, and we need to earn their trust in doing so. Ileana Murillo is Google's Head of Multicultural Marketing. Does Ms. Murillo do good work? I'm not directly familiar with her work, but she's an employee of Google, and we are proud of her employees. Your Head of Multicultural Marketing said you were pushing to get out the Latino vote, paying for a ride to the polls for the Latino vote only in key states, and you're saying that's not accurate. Yes, that's right. We haven't found any evidence to substantiate any of that. She just made it up out of thin air the day after the election and wrote this email to your top executives, and it's not true? Congressman, I'm happy to follow up, but I think employees today do their own activities. We don't want the follow-up. I want the real answers right here in this committee. As I said earlier, we have looked into it. Did you push to get out the key vote? I would say the two most populous states for Latinos would be California and Texas. Did you push to get out the Latino vote and pay for people to go to the polls in California and Texas? We as a company didn't have any effort to push out votes for any particular demographic. That would be against our principles. We participate in the civic process in a nonpartisan way, and we think it's really important we do it that way. I have an iPhone, and if I move from here and go over there and sit with my Democrat friends, which will make them real nervous, does Google track my movement? Does Google, through this phone, know that I have moved here and moved over to the left? It's either yes or no. Not by default. There may be a Google service which you've opted in to use. So Google knows that I am moving over there. It's not a trick question. You know, you make $100 million a year. You ought to be able to answer that question. Does Google know, through this phone, that I am moving over there and sitting next to Mr. Johnson, which would make him real nervous? It's his question. It's yes or no. I wouldn't be able to answer without looking at... You can't say yes or no. Without knowing more details. I have a concern concerning China. In 2010, Google left the Chinese marketplace due to concerns over hacking attacks, censorship, and how the Chinese government was possibly gaining access to data. I'm interested in what has changed since 2010 and how working with the Chinese government to censor research results are part of Google's core values. Do you understand my question? Congressman, right now, there are no plans for us to launch a search product in China. We are, in general, always looking to see how best it's part of our core mission and our principles to try hard to provide users with information. We always have evidence based on every country we have operated in. Us reaching out and giving users more information has a very positive impact, and we feel that calling. But right now, there are no plans to launch in China. To the extent that we ever approach a decision like that, I will be fully transparent, including with policymakers here, and engage and consult widely. Anticipating what took place in 2016 happening again, and this is specifically regarding what Russia did to foment racial tensions in the United States, and wanting to know how you are responding to that. Were they called for fake protests, either to get African Americans to turn out to protest something that was fake, or to have white supremacists be ginned up to attack communities of color? Specifically, what is Google doing to respond to that? We mainly saw, with respect to Russia, limited improper activity on our ad platforms. But in general, we are not a social networking company across the products we do. It's an area we haven't done well as a company, so we typically aren't connecting groups of people, and that's not how Google mainly works today. So we haven't seen that kind of activities on our platforms, but we are vigilant and happy to share any findings which come through as we look into it more. The operating environment in China has deteriorated with respect to surveillance censorship and the like since Google first made the decision in 2010 to leave. So I want to ask very specifically, are any employees currently having product meetings on this Chinese project? And if not, when did those end? We have undertaken an internal effort, but right now there are no plans to launch a search service in China, as I said earlier. Are there any current discussions with any member of the Chinese government on launching this app? Currently, we are not in discussions around launching a search product in China. Are there any current discussions with members of the Chinese government about this? This effort currently is an internal effort, and I'm happy to consult as well as be transparent to the extent we take steps towards launching a product in China. And who at Google is leading the Dragonfly effort? It's our efforts around building search. It's undertaken by our search teams, but these are distributed efforts. It's a limited effort internally currently. Will you, Mr. Vichai, rule out launching a tool for surveillance and censorship in China while you are CEO of Google? Congressman, I commit to engaging. One of the things which is important to us as a company, we have a stated mission of providing users with information, and so we always think it's in our duty to explore possibilities to give users access to information. And I have that commitment, but as I said earlier on this, we'll be very thoughtful and we will engage widely as we make progress. This is now the fourth hearing in a series of ridiculous hearings on a free speech of Internet companies. A significant portion of this hearing was a waste of time because the First Amendment protects private individuals and corporations' free speech rights. I'm going to search for Congressman Steve King. I'm going to hit the News tab. The first article that pops up is from ABC News. It says, Steve King's racist immigration talk prompts calls for congressional censure. That's a negative article. But you don't have a group of people at Google sitting there thinking and trying to modify search results. Every time Steve King comes up, a negative article appears. That's not what's happening, right? We always operate for any query with the same set of principles. We are trying to reflect what is currently, you know, if it is newsworthy, what is currently being discussed about that phrase. Thank you. So let me just conclude here by stating the obvious. If you want positive search results, do positive things. If you don't want negative search results, don't do negative things. To some of my colleagues across the aisle, if you're getting bad press articles and bad search results, don't blame Google or Facebook or Twitter. Consider blaming yourself. Did Google design a prototype for a search engine that could be used in China to censor content? Congressman, we have undertaken an internal effort. Did you create a prototype? There was a report in The Intercept that says a prototype for the censored search engine was designed. We have developed and explored what search could look like if it were to be launched in a country like China. And that's what we explored. How many months was that project ongoing? We have had the project underway for a while. And there have been other projects which we have undertaken for a while and we have never launched them, too. So we are constantly exploring. How many people were working on it? The estimates, you know, sorry, the number of engineers on the project have varied over time. Ten? At one point, we have had over 100 people working on it. That's my understanding. Who makes the judgment calls regarding content moderation at Google? Chairman, it depends on the area. So, for example, if it's YouTube, we have, you know, very clear teams which are responsible for YouTube content policies. Are they identified? Is it possible for a customer to write to them and say, hey, here's a concern I have? We give clear channels for content creators to, you know, to raise concerns back and we have clear avenues. And we also have had people who are responsible for these platforms, including content moderation, appear here, you know, and I think they've consulted widely here, too. Thank you. Well, you've gone for about three and a half hours and about what we predicted, isn't it, yesterday when we talked? So we thank you very much for your participation today. This concludes today's hearing. And without objection, all members will have five legislative days to submit written questions for the witness or additional materials for the record. And with that, this hearing is adjourned.