{"id":5315,"date":"2018-12-11T01:44:45","date_gmt":"2018-12-11T01:44:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/seven-things-to-watch-as-googles-ceo-appears-before-congress-hearing\/"},"modified":"2018-12-11T01:44:45","modified_gmt":"2018-12-11T01:44:45","slug":"seven-things-to-watch-as-googles-ceo-appears-before-congress-hearing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/seven-things-to-watch-as-googles-ceo-appears-before-congress-hearing\/","title":{"rendered":"Seven things to watch as Google’s CEO appears before Congress hearing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Google’s Sundar Pichai failed to show up at a Senate hearing earlier this year and was represented by an empty chair
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Google’s chief Sundar Pichai will be quizzed by US lawmakers later.<\/p>\n

He previously failed to appear at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing for top tech executives in September. An empty chair marked his absence.<\/p>\n

That hearing was attended by Facebook’s chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg and Twitter’s chief executive Jack Dorsey, who made their own mea culpas.<\/p>\n

Now it’s Mr Pichai’s turn, and he shouldn’t expect an easy ride.<\/p>\n

Scheduled to begin at 10:00 local time (15:00 GMT) in Washington DC, the hearing is entitled Transparency and Accountability: Examining Google and its Data Collection, Use and Filtering Practices.<\/p>\n

Here are seven things that could come up.<\/p>\n

1. Project Dragonfly<\/h2>\n
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\n Google chief Sundar Pichai will testify alone
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Google has been toying with creating a controversial search engine for China codenamed Project Dragonfly, as first reported by the Intercept<\/a> in August and later confirmed by the tech firm’s own privacy chief.<\/a><\/p>\n

Google has history in China, launching a search engine in the authoritative state in 2006, google.cn. <\/p>\n

It was compliant with the Chinese government’s censorship requirements at the time but pulled the plug in 2010, citing increasing concerns about cyber-attacks on activists.<\/p>\n

The potential move back into the country comes at a tense time in relations between the US and China, to say the least.<\/p>\n

While a trade war between the nations has recently been put on pause<\/a> for three months, the arrest of Huawei’s chief finance officer Meng Wanzhou in Canada is keeping things frosty.<\/p>\n

The committee may question the timing of Google’s push into China. <\/p>\n

2. Political bias<\/h2>\n
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\n Donald Trump tweets about alleged bias by Google against him
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Claims, often unsubstantiated, about bias against conservative politicians have been raised several times on Twitter by President Trump, with the hashtag #Stopthebias.<\/p>\n

He’s accused Google of failing to promote his State of the Union addresses and “controlling what we can and cannot see”.<\/p>\n

3. Data collection<\/h2>\n

Eight of Google’s services have more than one billion users each: YouTube, the Chrome browser, Gmail, Google Maps, Drive, the Android and Google Play stores and of course its search engine.<\/p>\n

The way it handles this immense amount of personal data should come under scrutiny. <\/p>\n

In August, Google was reported to be tracking its users locations even when location services were switched off.<\/a><\/p>\n

4. Security breaches <\/h2>\n

A security breach on social network Google+ earlier this year led to an announcement that the service was closing down.<\/p>\n

A blog post revealed that 500,000 people were revealed to have had personal details exposed<\/a> to third-party app developers. <\/p>\n

On Monday, Google announced a further 52.5 million people had been exposed in November via a separate bug and that it was shutting down the service four months earlier than planned, by April 2019.<\/p>\n

In light of other recent major data breaches on Amazon, Facebook, Yahoo and Marriott, the hearing may want reassurances from Mr Pichai that he is taking data protection seriously.<\/p>\n

5. Extraordinary influence<\/h2>\n

Google controls 92% of global search traffic according to analytics tool StatCounter.<\/a><\/p>\n

Its closest competitors are Bing and Yahoo with just over 2% each.<\/p>\n

But some are troubled by how mysterious the way the search engine’s algorithms work<\/a> are to outsiders.<\/p>\n

6. Sexual harassment<\/h2>\n

Google had its own #metoo moment this year, when Mr Pinchai revealed in a letter to staff that 48 people had been sacked for sexual harassment since 2016,<\/a> including 13 who were at senior level and above.<\/p>\n

On 1 November, tens of thousands of Google staff walked out around the world<\/a> to protest against the company’s practices.<\/p>\n

In return, Mr Pichai said he would increase transparency around instances of sexual harassment, expand mandatory training, and offer increased support for those with claims. <\/p>\n

But the Tech Workers Coalition said the measures did not go nearly far enough, particularly in cases relating to contractors who worked with the firm.<\/p>\n

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\n Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California
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7. Fair wages <\/h2>\n

Along with sexual harassment, Google has been accused of operating a so-called “shadow workforce”,<\/a> which makes up an estimated 50% of its staff. <\/p>\n

These contractors do not receive the same benefits as Google’s full-time employees, missing out on sick days and other “perks”. <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n