Google CEO holds ‘productive’ meeting with US lawmakers

Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO

Google CEO Sundar Pichai met privately Friday with members of Congress, just a few weeks after he and his boss, Google co-founder Larry Page, irked lawmakers by skipping a public hearing.

The closed-door gathering was expected to include discussions about President Donald Trump’s recent allegations that Google has been rigging the results of its influential search engine to suppress conservative viewpoints. Google has denied any political bias.

Recent reports that Google is poised to re-enter China with a search engine generating censored search results to comply with the demands of that country’s Communist government were also expected to be on the agenda.

Also potential new regulations that would define how much personal information that internet companies can collect about people using their services.

Both Trump and some U.S. lawmakers also have been raising the possibility of asking government regulators to investigate whether Google has abused its power to thwart competition through its dominant search engine and other widely used services, which include Gmail, YouTube, the Chrome web browser and its Android software that runs most of the world’s smartphones.

Pichai’s meeting with about two dozen Republican lawmakers was held in the Capitol office of House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who represents a district in Google’s home state of California.

“We held a very productive meeting with Google CEO Sundar Pichai to discuss concerns regarding Google’s business practices,” said Bob Goodlatte, a Republican from Virginia. He said Pichai will be invited to attend a public hearing that the House Judiciary Committee plans to hold in November, after the midterm elections.