Google's policy chief has been forced to deny the company manipulates search results under intense questioning from Republican Senator Ted Cruz.

Karan Bhatia attended the Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing on Tuesday and was grilled by several senators on alleged political bias.

Cruz in particular, who has long been critical of tech giants, said companies like Google who failed to remain neutral should have their legal protection taken away.

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Republican Senator from Texas Ted Cruz arrives for testimony by Karan Bhatia on Tuesday

The Texas senator was referring to Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which has been used by Google, Facebook and YouTube to legally distance themselves from user-generated content.

Congress has previously been called to change or repeal the law over allegations the social media giants have failed to control harassment.

In the hearing on Tuesday, several senators renewed their attacks on Section 230.

'If Big Tech cannot provide us with evidence that it's not playing Big Brother with its immense powers, we don't need to give them a subsidy through Section 230,' Cruz said.

Cruz's statement echoed a widely held belief among Republican lawmakers that the tech giants have shaped people's political views by altering search results and hiding conservative news sources.

Karan Bhatia (right), a Google vice president for government affairs and public policy, testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee

Karan Bhatia, Google's policy chief who was at the hearing, denied the claims and said it would be bad for business if users didn't trust the company to be impartial.

Bhatia also said Google had done all it could to remove offensive content on YouTube but the volume of videos being uploaded makes it difficult to police.

Senator Mazie Hirono, a Democrat from Hawaii, told Bloomberg after the hearing that Section 230 was originally put in place to protect smaller tech companies in the 1990s rather than giants.

'I don't think they're developing anymore so it probably could stand to be reviewed,' she said.

Bhatia was subjected to harsh questioning by several senators on alleged manipulation of Google's search results

But Rep. James Sensenbrenner, a Wisconsin Republican, said the investigation could easily generate a gratuitous and unhealthy level of government control.

'Just because a business is big doesn't mean it's bad,' Sensenbrenner said Tuesday. He argued that breaking up big companies could hurt smaller firms around the U.S. and might compound privacy problems.

While the big tech companies appear to have few friends on Capitol Hill, there has been some pushback from Republicans against a proposal by Senator Elizabeth Warren, who is running for president, that Amazon, Facebook and Google should be forced to divest companies that they purchased previously.

'I don't think the goal of antitrust law is to break up a big company just because they're big,' said Representative Kelly Armstrong, a Republican from North Dakota, on Fox Television.

'I don't ever want to penalize any company for success.'