Sundar Pichai and House Republicans probably went to bed on Tuesday feeling satisfied with the result of the Google CEO’s testimony before the Judiciary Committee. House Republicans got to spend several hours bloviating about bogus claims that the large tech companies deliberately suppress conservative viewpoints, while Pichai got to spend several hours listening to House Republicans bloviate—which meant he didn’t have to spend much time talking about even more uncomfortable subjects, like his company’s aggressive data collection and user tracking. But there were moments during the hearing that should have kept Pichai up at night.

Much of the media coverage, like the hearing itself, revolved around the censorship question—specifically Republicans’ attempts to get Pichai to admit that his company is biased against conservatives. Ohio Republican Steve Chabot, for instance, complained that Google search results about the House GOP’s attempt to repeal Obamacare largely directed users to articles about how people would lose insurance, and that results about the Republican tax cut returned pieces about how it disproportionately helped the wealthy.



There’s no evidence that Google deliberately suppresses conservative viewpoints in its search algorithm. More broadly, in fact, Pichai and Google have both gone to great lengths to appease conservatives. Regardless, the censorship question—while undoubtedly a P.R. headache for Google—is not an existential threat. Government scrutiny is.



Not every Republican on the Judiciary Committee spent their entire time catering to Fox News and conservative talk radio. Several also asked pointed questions about the company’s data collection and privacy efforts, suggesting that there is finally bipartisan momentum for meaningful regulation of Google, Facebook, and Amazon. With Democrats poised to take charge of the Judiciary Committee, at which point the censorship allegations will fade from prominence in policy discussions, Big Tech’s long-predicted reckoning may well be near.

Pichai’s testimony began with two members of House GOP leadership making the case that Google had grown too powerful. “According to The Wall Street Journal, 90 percent of all searches go through Google,” House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy said at the start of the hearing. “That is power. It comes with responsibility.” McCarthy appeared to be suggesting that Google’s dominance was bad in part because it was being used to suppress conservative voices. Still, committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte picked up the baton, saying “most Americans have no idea the sheer volume of detailed information” being swept up by the search engine’s data collection efforts, which “would make the NSA blush.”