Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Tuesday defended the search giant from accusations it’s weighted against conservatives, assuring lawmakers it’s run “without political bias” and “provides platforms for diverse perspectives and opinions.”
“To do otherwise would go against our core principles and our business interests,“ Pichai told members of the House Judiciary Committee.
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and other prominent Republicans, including President Trump, have accused Google of harboring anti-conservative views and potentially rigging searches against them.
Pichai said that’s not how search logistics work.
“It’s not possible for individual employees to manipulate our search results,” Pichai explained. “We don’t manually intervene on any particular search. Providing users with access to high-quality information is sacrosanct.”
[Opinion: Google News is heavily biased – but it’s not rigged]
Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, remained unconvinced.
“Google could well elect the next president,” chided Smith, because liberal bias is “baked into its algorithms.”
Democratic lawmakers pushed back against any notion of political bias at Google. Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., called it a “right-wing conspiracy theory.”
Lofgren, who represents Silicon Valley, gave Pichai a chance to explain search logistics when she asked why typing “idiot” into a Google search brought up images of Trump.
Pichai responded that results are based on billions of keywords ranked according to more than 200 factors, such as relevance and popularity.
“Last year, we served over 3 trillion searches. Just as a fact, every single day, 15 percent of the searches Google sees, we have never seen them before,” Pichai replied. “So this is working at scale. We don’t manually intervene on any particular search result.”
Later, Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., called alleged anti-conservative bias a “waste of time” and said if lawmakers want to see more positive search results they should “do positive things.”
