Google plans to send a top executive to Congress after being criticized

Google said Monday that Sundar Pichai, its chief executive, had agreed to testify in Congress this year following continued criticism from Republican lawmakers that mainstream technology platforms and social media sites were censoring online curators.

Pichai agreed to attend the unannounced hearing in response to a request from Majority House Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.), Who, like other Republicans, including President Trump, has Google criticized and did not respond to legislators' questions in person.

Before the hearing, Pichai plans to visit the country's capital on Friday to meet Democratic and Republican members of the Congress, including a session with McCarthy and two dozen GOP colleagues, a spokesman said Monday. from the leader of the GOP. The visit comes weeks after Pichai and Larry Page, the managing director of Google's parent company, Alphabet, both refused to participate in a hearing on the 2018 elections, provoking bipartisan outrage.

"I look forward to meeting members from both sides of the aisle, to answer a wide range of questions and explain our approach," Pichai said in a statement on Monday. "These meetings will continue to engage Google and Congress, including seven times in Congress this year."

When he arrives in Washington, Pichai will not fail to be subject to bipartite scrutiny – on a range of topics, including the company's approach to privacy and its efforts to prevent governments Foreigners, including many, including McCarthy, have criticized Google for its reported ambitions of launching a search engine in China that meets Beijing's strict censorship rules.

[Google’s ‘no-show’ in Congress adds to its political headache]

But Google must also fight against the increasingly frequent attacks of the election year because it is biased against the conservatives. Trump accused Google of "rigged" search results against him, giving better billing to negative stories about his administration – a charge brought by the president without proof.

Google has denied having rigged its search results.

Trump's main assistants then suggested regulating the presentation of search results by Google. For its part, the Justice Ministry plans to bring together state attorneys general – who have the power to investigate and penalize technology giants such as Google – for an event in Washington on Tuesday on filtering practices online Silicon Valley.

Trump's family, including his son Donald Trump Jr., blasted Google after Breitbart published this month a video of the leaders of the research giant addressing employees after the 2016 elections. In an attempt to console employees, Pichai said that the victory of Trump had caused "a lot of fears at Google." Google internal emails published by the Wall Street Journal showed engineers how to modify the results to help users. who sought to fight the president on his ban on traveling, although such ideas have never been implemented.