Google CEO Sundar Pichai will deliver the opening address of Google I / O 2018 at the Shoreline Amphitheater on May 8, 2018 in Mountain View, California. (Photo: JUSTIN SULLIVAN, Getty Images)

SAN FRANCISCO – Rebated by lawmakers and criticized by President Trump, Google is on the political hot seat – and its CEO goes to Capitol Hill to make peace.

Earlier this month, Sundar Pichai did not show up for a congressional hearing on state-sponsored election interferences; the top leaders of Facebook and Twitter have done. In a public reprimand, the Senate Intelligence Committee left a chair open to highlight Pichai's absence. And the leader of the Republican majority in the House, Kevin McCarthy, has criticized Google in a tweet, saying that an "invitation will be launched" to the Internet giant.

Google has received the message. On Friday, Pichai will meet McCarthy and more than twenty Republican deputies behind closed doors.

"I look forward to meeting members from both sides of the aisle, to answer a wide range of questions and to explain our approach," said Mr. Pichai, also should meet with White House economic advisor Larry Kudlow at Google's request.

Top of the agenda for McCarthy, a critic of Google: The Internet giant does not treat the conservatives fairly.

The private meeting in McCarthy's office was held the same week as Google's privacy director, Keith Enright, was grilled by lawmakers at an online Senate hearing on the company exploring a new product. research for China. launched.

"Google has a lot of questions to ask about bias reports in its search results, breaches of user privacy, anti-competitive behavior and trade relations with repressive regimes like China," McCarthy said in a statement. .

Mr. Pichai is scheduled to appear at the hearing of the Judiciary Committee of the House after the mid-term elections in November. "This meeting will inform the judicial committee hearing later this fall," said McCarthy.

Dan Schnur, a professor at the Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Southern California, says Google made a mistake by failing to show up at the Senate hearing but the company understood

"He's going to be roasted on his return to Washington, but in Washington, you have a second chance to make a first impression," he said. "Even if there are harsh feelings, they come forward cooperatively to go forward, they should be fine."

Until recently, lawmakers had focused their criticism on another tech giant, Facebook, after a series of privacy breaches and the uncontrolled spread of online propaganda by Russian agents during and after the first time. 2016 presidential election.

Now, Google, which dominates research activities around the world and whose YouTube video service has been criticized for disseminating theories of misinformation and conspiracy, is facing a tighter examination of its business practices and news. regulatory threats.

Google was frequently mentioned at a meeting Tuesday with Attorney General Jeff Sessions and law enforcement officials in the state of the country to explore antitrust investigations and data privacy.

"Google has a lot of questions to ask about bias reports in search results, privacy breaches, (Photo: Robert Deutsch, USA TODAY & # 39; HUI)

The attacks on Google have intensified in recent weeks. Trump and other prominent Republicans have accused Google and other technology companies of suppressing and censoring conservative voices and views. Last month, Trump said the search results for "Trump News" were "RIGGED, for me and for others, so almost all articles and news are ADB."

McCarthy had also criticized Google for the search results, tweeting the results that mistakenly said the ideology of the Californian Republican Party included "Nazism" was a "shame". Google has blamed "vandalism" on Wikipedia.

Google claims not to rank search results to manipulate political sentiment, but last week the "Wall Street Journal" reported that Google employees debated ways to change research results to direct users to pro-immigration organizations and contact lawmakers and government agencies after Trump's immigration ban on predominant countries Muslim. And the right information site, Breitbart, got an internal video after Trump's election in 2016, in which Alphabet executives, a parent of Google, expressed their dismay, adding that Google had a bias against the Conservatives.

McCarthy, who has intensified his criticism of Google in recent weeks, has targeted Google by failing to send the CEO of Alphabet, Larry Page or Pichai, to a hearing of the Senate commission on electoral interference. Google had proposed to send Kent Walker, his senior vice president for international affairs and an interlocutor on electoral interference, but the offer was rejected by the committee. Facebook's chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, and Twitter's CEO, Jack Dorsey, answered Senators' questions at the hearing, next to an empty chair labeled "Google" .

Censorship charges against Silicon Valley, a leftist party, were raised at numerous hearings on Capitol Hill and became a conservative rallying cry before the mid-term elections. They are also the subject of a new documentary, "The Creepy Line," by conservative author Peter Schweizer. A recent Media Research Center poll conducted by McLaughlin & Associates found that 65% of self-proclaimed conservatives think social media companies intentionally censure political rights.

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