Embattled Google CEO Sundar Pichai, amid allegations of anti-conservative bias and privacy violations on the platform, plans to tell the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday that his company is no haven for political bias.
“I lead this company without political bias and work to ensure that our products continue to operate that way,” Pichai will tell the committee, according to a copy of his prepared remarks. “To do otherwise would go against our core principles and our business interests. We are a company that provides platforms for diverse perspectives and opinions—and we have no shortage of them among our own employees.”
“Some of our Googlers are former servicemen and women who have risked much in defense of our country,” he added. “Some are civil libertarians who fiercely defend freedom of expression.”
Google has been under close scrutiny amid allegations of anti-conservative bias, which it denies. The CEO met privately with GOP lawmakers on Capitol Hill in September to discuss the allegations and concerns about the firm’s re-entry into China and privacy issues.
In his prepared testimony before the House Judiciary Committee Pichai also noted that Google supports federal privacy legislation.
“We recognize the important role of governments, including this Committee, in setting rules for the development and use of technology,” Pichai will tell the House panel. “To that end, we support federal privacy legislation and proposed a legislative framework for privacy earlier this year.”
The comments come as Google tries to manage the protection of personal information on its Plus service, prodding the company to accelerate its plans to shut down a little-used social network created to compete against Facebook.
A privacy flaw that inadvertently exposed the names, email addresses, ages and other personal information of 52.5 million Google Plus users last month convinced Google to close the service in April instead of August, as previously announced. Google revealed the new closure date and its latest privacy lapse in a Monday blog post.
It’s the second time in two months that Google has disclosed the existence of a problem that enabled unauthorized access to Plus profiles. In October, the company acknowledged finding a privacy flaw affecting 500,000 Plus users that it waited more than six months to disclose.
As such, the Google chief’s appearance on Capitol Hill will be closely followed. For Pichai, Tuesday is a chance to set the record straight.
The 46-year-old chief…
