Google CEO Sundar Pichai to testify before Congress
Data privacy online has become a massive talking point since last year after scandals started unfurling, which connected Facebook and a data-harvesting firm Cambridge Analytica.
Europe has been loosening the vice-like grip that major tech companies such as Google, Facebook, Twitter and more have had over user data with its GDPR regulations.
Sundar Pichai, Chief Executive Officer of Google, looks on during the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland January 24, 2018. Reuters
In the US, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was summoned for a congressional hearing to explain the misuse of user data of nearly 87 million people by Cambridge Analytica.
In September another hearing was scheduled where Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Larry Page were asked to come along with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. However, neither Pichai nor Page showed up.
Now it seems that Pichai has no choice. Google has been hit with a lot of criticism off late for alleged political bias in search results. Donald Trump tweeted that Google’s search results are “rigged,” and that it is “suppressing voices of Conservatives”.
The Washington Post has reported that on 5 December Sundar Pichai will be testifying in front of Congress. As per the report, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and GOP lawmakers are interested in Google’ search engine algorithm and how it promotes stories.
Recently a bug was discovered which had exposed personal data of hundreds of thousands of users on Google+. After it was revealed that Google accidentally exposed private information of as many as 5,00,000 users, Google decided that it was time to pull the plug on Google+.
It’s incidents like these which have certainly lead many people to question the data privacy policy of Google.
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