[Music]
our only witness today is mr sunder
pichai
chai is the chief executive officer of
google
chairman good luck ranking member nadler
distinguished members of the committee
thank you for the opportunity to be here
today
more than 90 of all internet searches
take place
on google or subsidiary youtube
and they are curating what we see google
has long faced criticism for
manipulating search results to censor
conservatives
conservative individuals and
organizations have had their pro-trump
content
tagged as hate speech or had their
content reduced
in search results so what are you going
to
improve that situation
congressman thanks for the question if i
may
some of the studies you mentioned we
have investigated those
there are other studies which have
looked at it we have found
issues with the methodology and the
sample size and so on
but let me step back and say providing
users with high quality accurate and
trusted information
is sacrosanct to us it's what our
principles are
under business interests our natural
long-term incentives are aligned with
that we want to serve users everywhere
and we need to earn their trust in doing
so um ileana murillo is google's head of
multicultural
marketing does miss murillo do good work
i'm not directly familiar with her work
but she's an employee of google and you
know
we are proud of her employees your head
of multicultural marketing
said you were pushing to get out the
latino vote paying for a ride to the po
to the polls for the latino vote only in
key states and you're saying that's not
accurate
uh yes that's right uh we haven't found
any evidence to substantiate
she just made it up out of thin air the
day after the election and wrote this
email to your top executives and it's
not true
congressman i'm happy to follow up but i
think the employees today do their own
activities i want the follow-up i want
the real answers right here in this
committee
as i said earlier we have looked into it
we didn't find it did you push to get
out the key vote and and
i would say the two most populous states
for
latinos would be california and texas
did you push to get out the latino vote
and pay for people to go to the polls
in california and texas we as a company
didn't have
any effort to push out votes for any
particular demographic that would be
against our principles
we participate in the civic process in
an in a in a non-partisan way and
and we think it's really important we do
it that way
i have an iphone and if i
move from here and go over there and sit
with my democrat friends which will make
them real
nervous does google track my movement
does google through this phone know
that i have moved here and moved over to
the left
it's either yes or no not by default
there may be a google service which
you've opted in to use
uh and if so google knows that i am
moving over there
it's not a trick question you know you
make 100 million dollars a year you
ought to be able to answer that question
does google know through this phone
that i am moving over there and sit next
to mr johnson
which would make him real nervous it's
his question
it's just your no i wouldn't be able to
answer without looking at
you can't say yes or no without knowing
more details
i have a concern concerning
china in 2010 google left the chinese
marketplace
due to concerns over hack hacking
attacks censorship
and how the chinese government was
possibly gaining access
to data i'm interested in
what has changed since 2010 and how
working with the chinese government to
censor
research results are part of google's
core values do you understand my
question
congressman we right now there are no
plans for us to
launch a search product in china we are
in general always looking to see how
best it's part of our core mission and
our principles to try hard to provide
users with information
we always have evidence based on every
country we have operated in
us reaching out and giving users to more
information has a very positive impact
and
and we feel that calling but right now
there are no plans to launch in china
to the extent that we uh we ever
you know approach a decision like that
uh i
i will be fully transparent including
with policy makers here
and and engage and consult widely so
anticipating
um what took place in 2016 happening
again and this is specifically regarding
um what russia did to foment racial
tensions in the united states
and wanting to know how you are
responding to that
where they called for you know fake
protest
uh either to get african-americans to
turn out to protest something that was
fake
or to have uh white supremacists uh
be ginned up to attack communities of
color so specifically
what is google doing to respond to that
we mainly saw uh with respect to russia
uh
limited improper activity on our uh ad
platforms
but in general uh you know we are not a
social networking company uh across the
products we do
it's an area we haven't done well as a
company so we typically are in
connecting
groups of people and that's not how
google mainly works today
and so we haven't seen that kind of
activities on our platforms but we are
vigilant and
you know and happy to share any findings
which come through as we look into it
more
the operating environment in china has
deteriorated with respect to
surveillance censorship
and the like since google first made the
decision in 2010 to leave
so i want to ask very specifically are
any employees currently
having product meetings on this on this
chinese project
and when if not when did those end
we have undertaken an internal effort
but right now there are no plans to
launch
a search service in china as i said
earlier are there any
current discussions with any member of
the chinese government on launching this
app uh currently we are not in
discussions around launching a search
product in china are there any current
discussions with members of the chinese
government about this
uh you know this effort currently is an
internal effort and uh
you know i'm happy to uh you know
consult as well as we transparent to the
extent we take
steps towards launching a product in
china and who at google is leading the
dragonfly
effort uh it's a you know our our
efforts around
uh building search you know it's it's
it's undertaken by
our search teams but these are
distributed efforts it's a limited
effort internally currently
will you mr pachai rule out launching a
tool for surveillance and censorship in
china
while you are ceo of google congressman
i i commit to uh engaging one of the
things which is important to us as a
company
we have a stated mission of providing
users with information
and so we always we think it's in our
duty to explore possibilities
to give users access to information and
you know
i have that commitment but you know as i
said earlier on this we'll be very
thoughtful
and we will engage widely as we make
progress
this is now the fourth hearing in a
series of ridiculous hearings
on a free speech of internet companies a
significant portion of this hearing was
a waste of time because the first
amendment
protects private individuals and
corporations
free speech rights so i'm going to
search for
consummate steve king i'm going to hit
the news tab
first article that pops up is from abc
news
it says steve king's racist immigration
talk prompts calls for congressional
censure
that's a negative article but you don't
have a group of people google sitting
there thinking
and trying to modify search results
every time steve king comes up
a negative article appears that's not
what's happening right
we always operate for any query with the
same set of principles we are trying to
reflect
what is currently you know if it is
newsworthy what is currently being
discussed
about that that that phrase thank you
so let me just conclude here by stating
the obvious
if you want positive search results do
positive things
if you don't want negative search
results don't do negative things
and do some of my colleagues across the
aisle if you're getting bad press
articles and bad search results don't
blame google or
facebook or twitter consider blaming
yourself
um did google design a prototype
for a search engine that could be used
in china to censor
content uh congressman
we have undertaken an internal effort uh
did you create a prototype though there
was a report in the intercept
that says a prototype for the censored
search engine was designed
we've developed and explored what search
could look like
if it if it were to be launched in a
country like china and that's what we
uh explored and how many months was that
project
uh ongoing uh we've had the project
underway for a while
and there have been other projects which
we've undertaken for a while and we've
never launched them too so
we're constantly exploring how many how
many people were working on it
uh the estimates uh you know i've
changed uh
sorry the number of engineers on the
project have varied over time at 10.
at one point we have had over 100 people
working on it that's my understanding
who makes the judgment calls regarding
content moderation
at google uh chairman it depends on the
area so for example if it's youtube we
have
uh you know uh very clear teams which
are responsible for
uh youtube content policies and they
identified is it possible for
a customer to write to them and say hey
here's
here's a concern i have we give clear
channels for content creators to
uh you know to raise concerns back and
we have clear avenues
and and we also have had people who are
responsible for these platforms
uh including content moderation appear
here uh
you know and and and i think they've
consulted widely here
here too thank you well you've uh gone
for about
uh three and a half hours and uh it's
about what we predicted isn't it
yesterday when we talked so
uh we uh thank you very much for
your participation today this concludes
today's hearing and without
objection all members will have five
legislative days to submit written
questions for the witness or additional
materials for the record and with that
this hearing is adjourned