Human rights groups and Google's own employees have spoken out publicly about this issue, with more than 730 recently signing an open letter calling on the company to cancel its efforts, and lawmakers at Tuesday's hearing made it clear that they, too, are extremely wary of any plans by Google to work with China's oppressive regime.Ī handful of representatives also asked Pichai about how transparent Google is when it comes to its data collection practices. "We always think it's in our duty to explore possibilities to give users access to information," Pichai said. Pichai would not, however, go so far as to commit not to launch "a tool for surveillance and censorship in China," as he was asked to do by Rep. The Intercept reported in September that at one point Google employees working on the "Project Dragonfly" efforts were told to get it in "launch-ready state" to roll out upon approval from Beijing officials. Pichai has said in the past that Google is "not close" to launching a censored search result in China, though Tuesday's comments appear to further distance the company from those efforts. "Right now, we have no plans to launch search in China," Pichai answered, adding that access to information is "an important human right." Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tx.) who expressed concern that Google would aid in the oppression of Chinese people "looking for a lifeline of freedom and democracy." One of the first specific questions about Google's plans in China came from Rep. The Intercept first reported details of the project over the summer, which would block search results for queries that the Chinese government deemed sensitive, like "human rights" and "student protest" and link users' searches to their personal phone numbers. When Cicilline pushed him on whether Google would support some kind of antitrust legislation, Pichai vaguely answered that Google would be "happy to engage constructively on legislation in any of these areas." Pichai was evasive on China plansĪnother topic that came up multiple times was Google's plan to launch a censored search engine in China. In response, Pichai said that Google "provides users with the best experience and the most relevant information," and denied that the company used discriminatory practices in its search results. David Cicilline (D-RI) said, and asked whether Google would commit to ending any discriminatory practices against competitors. "I strongly support an open, decentralized internet that is free of powerful gatekeepers with the ability to discriminate against rivals, threaten innovation or harm consumers," Rep. Last year, the EU slapped Google with a $2.7 billion antitrust fine for its shopping results. Regulators and competitors like Yelp have criticized Google for surfacing its own services, like maps, jobs postings, business reviews and travel information over information from other websites. Google is by far the most popular search engine in the world, with more than 90 percent market share, according to StatCounter, but the process of how exactly Google's platforms surface search results are complicated and opaque. Several representatives brought up other kinds of bias. Lieu has made similar points at past hearings that included Facebook, Twitter, and Alphabet. "If you get bad press, don't blame Google. "If you want positive searches, do positive things," Lieu said. However, he also used sample Google searches to show that Google would turn up positive search results about Republicans and negative search results about Democrats. Even if Google was biased, he said, that would be its right. Ted Lieu (D-Ca.) who said that the queries on conservative bias "wasted time" given that private, profit-seeking companies like Google are protected by the First Amendment. One particularly fiery take against that line of questioning came from Rep. Pichai echoed Google's previous denials, and repeatedly responded that Google's search algorithms did not favor any particular ideology, but instead surfaced the most relevant results, which could be affected by the time of a users' search, as well as other factors like their location. This has been a consistent narrative over the past year, as Republican lawmakers - and even President Donald Trump - have accused Google and other tech platforms of suppressing conservative voices. Tuesday's hearing was titled "Transparency & Accountability: Examining Google and its Data Collection, Use, and Filtering Practices" and many representatives posed questions on whether or not Google's search results were biased against conservative points of view. | Home of WB Movies, TV, Games, and more! (function(w,d,s,l,i).
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