Google CEO Sundar Pichai prepares to testify as House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy speaks before the House Judiciary Committee at the Rayburn House Office Building. | Alex Wong/Getty Images Legal Lawmakers clash over claims of Google's anti-GOP bias

Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Tuesday became the latest tech executive to face the ire of congressional Republicans on Capitol Hill in an escalating fight over allegations of online bias — claims the company and Democratic lawmakers flatly dispute.

Those claims proved to be the central thread in a marathon House Judiciary hearing with Pichai, which also saw critiques and questions from both sides of the aisle on issues ranging from Google's flirtations with launching a search product in China to antitrust concerns to digital privacy.


In an unusual move, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy kicked off the hearing — despite not sitting on the committee — by cautioning the tech mogul against letting political bias color its services. The lawmaker, who's been a leading voice among the prominent Republicans accusing top tech firms in Silicon Valley of censoring conservative speech, said he hoped Pichai could reassure the committee that "any political bias within Google's workforce does not creep into its search products."

"We need to know that Google is on the side of the free world, and that it will provide its services free of anti-competitive behavior, political bias and censorship," McCarthy said.

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But Rep. Jerry Nadler, House Judiciary ranking member and presumptive chair of the panel when Democrats take the House in the next Congress, dismissed out of hand what he called "entirely fictitious allegations of anti-conservative bias."

"We should not let the delusions of the far right distract us from the real issues that should be the focus of Tuesday's hearing," Nadler said in opening remarks. "No credible evidence supports this right-wing conspiracy."

In recent weeks, conservatives have pointed to reports of Google staffers internally expressing support for liberal policies and leaders to accuse the company of bias. But Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren, whose district lies within Silicon Valley, said the leanings of tech staffers “has nothing to do with the algorithms and really automated process that is the search engine.”

There is no “little man behind the curtain” steering search results, she contended in her questioning of Pichai.

Pichai repeatedly pushed back on the conservative critiques, committing in his opening to leading the company “without political bias." Later, in response to questioning from Rep. Lamar Smith over Google News minimally featuring conservative media outlets, Pichai said, "We find that we have a wide variety of sources, including sources from the left and right."

Conservatives including President Donald Trump have ramped up accusations that Google and other internet companies are biased against them and their views, stoking the passions of their Republican base even as the incoming Democratic House majority remains highly skeptical of the allegations.

McCarthy, RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel and Trump’s 2020 campaign chairman Brad Parscale are among the GOP officials who’ve complained about a host of perceived Silicon Valley slights against conservatives. They range from Facebook’s alleged stripping of ad revenue from the pro-Trump video-blogging duo Diamond and Silk to a Google search result that briefly paired the California GOP with “Nazism.”

Despite the heated words over bias claims, lawmakers did find common ground during the hearing in voicing concern over Google's reported development of a censored search engine it could operate in China. Critics say the effort, dubbed “Project Dragonfly,” would further the Chinese government’s efforts to block the free flow of information to its citizens.

McCarthy on Tuesday called the reports "troubling," and Nadler said he was disturbed by the prospect of Google developing a product that would blacklist certain words at the Chinese government's behest.

While Pichai said the company currently has "no plans to launch" a search product in China, he declined to rule out doing so in the future during an exchange with Rhode Island Rep. David Cicilline, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary antitrust subcommittee.

Pichai framed the company's pursuit as "a limited effort internally," indicating they are not currently in discussions over it with Chinese authorities. But he acknowledged the company at one point had over 100 staffers working on the project.

Lawmakers broached a number of other hot-button topics, including political advertising on the platform, Google CEO Sundar Pichai Android phone location tracking, concerns over white supremacist content on Google subsidiary YouTube and disinformation that Russia seeks to spread online.

Panel members also seized on the company's Monday reveal that a coding bug exposed the data of more than 50 million users of the Google+ social network to third-party app developers.

"While Google has so far found no evidence that developers were abusing these bugs, or that any user profile data was misused, incidents like this still raise legitimate questions about what types of data exposures a company is obligated to publicly disclose," Nadler said.

Google already acknowledged in October that a separate bug exposed the information of up to 500,000 Google+ users to hundreds of third-party groups, prompting the company to announce it would shutter the social networking site in August. Now, due to the latest bug discovery, the company said it plans to wind down the product by April.

The revelations comes as top tech companies face mounting pressure in Washington to protect consumer data amid a series of high-profile breaches. The incidents have prompted lawmakers to call for Congress to enact national data privacy legislation, an issue that appears poised to gain steam in the next Congress.

Privacy concerns were at the center of a number of moments during Tuesday's hearing in which lawmakers appeared to struggle with their grasp of the complex issues facing Google. During one contentious exchange, Republican Rep. Ted Poe held up his iPhone and pressed Pichai to say whether Google was currently tracking his movements.

"Does Google know, through this phone, that I am moving over there?" Poe said, gesturing toward the other side of the hearing room. Pichai declined to answer, saying he could not know definitively without getting more information. Google does not make iPhones.

Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna, whose district covers parts of Silicon Valley, called the questioning "embarrassing" on Twitter. "Can a 5th grader from Poe’s district please give Poe a tutorial on what an app is?" he tweeted.

During another exchange, Rep. Steve Cohen said, “I use your apparatus often, or your search engine,” in reference to Google.

Tech literacy surfaced as an issue on Capitol Hill after Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified earlier this year, a hearing during which several lawmakers seemed befuddled by how the social network functions.

Prior to the hearing, Infowars leader Alex Jones, a far-right conspiracy theorist who's accused the nation's leading tech companies of anti-conservative bias, stood outside the hearing room to rail against Google for "censorship." Jones, flanked by longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone, took a seat just a few rows back from Pichai as the hearing got under way.