It's an insult to the public that Google isn't sending its CEO to the Senate
It's an insult to the public that Google isn't sending
its CEO to the Senate
Google declined an invitation from the Senate Select
Committee on Intelligence to have CEO Sundar Pichai testify on Russia's
meddling in the 2016 election.
Google has largely avoided the recent controversies
surrounding other tech platforms by letting Facebook and Twitter absorb all the
public scrutiny.
The Senate and the public deserve to hear from Google's
top leadership, not its lawyers, about what went wrong and how the company
plans to make things better.
By Steve Kovach September 1, 2018
When the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence holds
its next hearing on Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, it
will hear from two of the top executives in the tech industry: Twitter CEO Jack
Dorsey and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg.
Beside them on Wednesday could be an empty seat that's
reserved for another high-profile leader. Google CEO Sundar Pichai has so far
refused to accept the Senate committee's invitation to show up.
Instead of Pichai, Google offered its top lawyer, Kent
Walker, to testify. Walker, the senior vice president of global affairs, is the
same guy who previously testified along with Facebook and Twitter's lawyers
last year, which was a meek effort from all three companies at a time when
Congress and the public deserved to hear from top leadership about how their
platforms were so badly abused ahead of the elections.
"Chances are there's going to be an empty chair
there," Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va, told CNBC Wednesday, regarding Google's
snub of the hearings. "And I think there will be a lot more questions
raised that could have been actually dealt with if they sent a senior
decision-maker and not simply their counsel."
Warner is the vice chair of the Senate committee.
Google has not said why Pichai or his boss, Alphabet CEO
Larry Page, won't accept the committee's invitation. The company declined to
comment Friday.
It's a tumultuous time for the world's biggest tech
companies, with Facebook taking most of the heat following the reveal of the
Cambridge Analytica data scandal in March.
Since then, we've seen Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg go
through two marathon sessions of weak congressional testimony. We've seen him
fumble through a self-inflicted scandal about posting Holocaust denial content
to the platform. We've seen him squirm when asked why Alex Jones was still
allowed to post bogus conspiracy theories, only to boot Jones off Facebook
after a nod from Apple a few days later. We've seen a handful of top Facebook
executives, including security chief Alex Stamos, leave the company. And on and
on and on.
It's a similar story with Dorsey, who went on a press
tour during the Jones controversy a few weeks ago and has faced a relentless
barrage of scrutiny in the media, on Twitter and within his own company over
how he's handled moderating all the vile content and abuse that infects the
site every day.
But Google has largely been able to skirt the
controversies plaguing its rival platforms, letting Facebook and Twitter take
all the heat while its executives shy away from anything that could put them in
danger of public scrutiny.
I'm not talking about manufactured and false
controversies from the president about anti-conservative political bias in
Google's search results, by the way. (But that's sure to be a good topic for
conservative senators on the committee to distract from the hearing's stated
purpose of looking into election meddling.) I'm talking about how Google has
let its own platforms, ranging from Google search and Google News to YouTube,
become abused and perverted over the years. I'm talking about how if you think Facebook
plays it fast and loose with your personal data, take a look at how Google uses
the data you provide to target ads based on your location, videos you watch,
your search queries and even stuff you buy with your credit card.
Google also allows third parties to access your Google
services, including Gmail. Cambridge Analytica and other third-party apps were
able to scoop up Facebook user data with little oversight or accountability.
The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this summer that Google also does
little to police third parties that have access to users' Gmail accounts and
their data. Plus, a few weeks ago Google admitted that some of its services can
track your location, even if you selected to turn off location tracking.
Free pass
And yet, Google is getting a pass. Facebook and Twitter
have been wildly inconsistent and confusing in their responses to various
scandals, but at least they're taking their shots in full public view. Google
would rather send Walker to spew a bunch of legalese than hold its own leaders
accountable, just like it did last year.
Even more frustrating is the fact that Google's business
appears to be immune to any controversy, giving leadership and investors zero
economic incentive to own up to its issues. Google has a series of impenetrable
moats around its business — it's the dominant search engine, has the top
streaming video site, the most popular web browser, the most popular email
service and makes the operating system that powers practically every non-Apple
phone on the planet.
Because of all that, Alphabet is healthier than ever,
reporting close to $33 billion in revenue last quarter. Even the European
Union's record $5 billion Android antitrust fine against Google was nothing
more than a financial blip for the company, and will do little to stop its
dominance in mobile. Google's stock, meanwhile, keeps climbing.
But those are also the very reasons Google should send
Pichai to testify on Wednesday.
It's because Google is so big. It's because it has built
so many moats around its businesses. It's because it needs personal data from
users to make its billions. It's because it built a suite of powerful platforms
ripe for abuse from Russia and Iran. That's what makes it so offensive that
Google won't take its responsibility seriously enough to put its leader in
front of the Senate and explain how it's going to do better.
Google should be examined in exactly the same way
Facebook and Twitter will be on Wednesday.
But instead the company will keep its CEO in Mountain
View while his peers are in Washington. And that's an insult to the rest of us.
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