Google boss due on Capitol Hill grill
Google CEO Sundar Pichai is heading to Capitol Hill next week — just a month after his top legal officer got blasted by Republicans over the search giant’s alleged discrimination against conservatives, sources told On The Money.
For Pichai, billions of dollars in revenue could be at stake as the fate of a proposed antitrust bill hangs in the balance.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has promised to bring the Senate bill — the Internet Innovation and Choice Act — to the floor but hasn’t yet set a date.
The so-called “non-discrimination bill” would stop tech platforms from “selfpreferencing” their own content. In the case of Google, the company would no longer be able to promote its own apps over those of competitors.
Pichai is slated to meet with legislators including Sens. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) and John Thune (R-SD), sources close to the situation said.
Google declined to specifically comment on the possible forthcoming meetings between Pichai and lawmakers.
A Google spokesperson told The Post, “We regularly engage with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle on a range of issues including economic growth, small-business support, immigration reform and cybersecurity. We’ll continue to engage on issues relevant to people and businesses using our products.”
While insiders say Pichai is eager to address concerns over Google’s monopoly power, sources close to the Republicans say they have a very different agenda in mind.
Earlier this week, Thune introduced legislation that would stop Google from using an algorithm that disproportionately marks emails from Republicans as spam. If the meeting with Google legal chief Kent Walker is any indication, Pichai is in for a smackdown.
Thune, along with 20 other Republican co-sponsors, points to a recent study from North Carolina State University that Google Gmail marks 67.6% of emails from Republican politicians as spam whereas only 8.2% of emails from Democrats end up in recipients’ spam folder.