(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Here’s what I learned from watching Mr. Pichai go to Washington: Our elected representatives are too often failing us when it comes to holding powerful tech companies to account. The powerful tech companies are also failing in being accountable to the public.
Sundar Pichai, the chief executive officer of Alphabet Inc.’s Google unit, appeared before a congressional committee on Tueday in the continuing and mostly necessary inquiries into the actions of U.S. technology giants. Many of the questions from the House Judiciary Committee centered on three topics: whether Google is a biased source of information, how much data Google collects about people, and whether Google will resume its web search service in China.
Those are important topics. But this three-and-half-hour hearing was not as worthwhile as it should have been for Congress, the company and the public. Members of Congress didn’t ask strong questions or botched follow-up questions that allowed Pichai to repeat rote talking points. And Pichai, like many of his tech executive peers, too often dodged when given a chance to engage in important philosophical and practical questions about Google and the internet more broadly.
Everyone is to blame for these failures. Instead of pointing fingers and ducking questions, real accountability for tech companies needs to move way beyond gotcha questions and answers that skim over tough subjects.
The failures on the topic of political bias were the most egregious. Google has repeatedly been accused, without solid evidence, of skewing web searches or quashing other information to stifle conservative points of view. These accusations are mostly made in bad faith to score political points, but there is a legitimate foundation behind even the illegitimate questions about Google’s objectivity.
The computer models that prioritize which web links people see on Google or the automated suggestions for YouTube videos are by design a black box. This built-in secrecy — combined with the left-leaning tendencies of many U.S. Google employees — fuel the suspicion that Google’s information-ordering system is skewed. It also wasn’t long ago that the U.S. government investigated Google for bias of a different sort — favoring its own technology services over those of rivals such as Yelp.
Bias is an important inquiry, but Pichai ducked one question about tilting the scales to favor its own technology. Pichai had a better answer to questions about bias along political lines — that the company designs its computer systems with fail-safes so no employee or group of employees can manipulate the technology and that Google has no financial motivation to skew information distribution along ideological lines. Several members of Congress didn’t seem to listen to this answer or didn’t believe it.
What if, instead of accusations, members of Congress and Google offered solutions? Could Google, for example, offer to privately make company computer code open to review by lawmakers and select technology experts to explain it? There is some precedent here. Some tech companies, including Microsoft and Huawei, offer governments confidential inspections of their software code to assess potential security vulnerabilities. I truly don’t know that this is feasible for Google and questions of bias, nor do I know if it would assuage people who are inclined to believe the company is out to get them. But it’s worthwhile to look for solutions to the bias questions rather than continue the pattern of Google and its critics talking past each other.
On the important question about Google’s data harvesting on billions of people, Pichai fielded some strong questions particularly from Representative Doug Collins, the Republican from Georgia. Pichai seemed to have a better grasp than Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg about the categories of information that Google collects, but that doesn’t mean he was as forthcoming as he should have been. Again, though, instead of spending hours trying to nail Jell-O to the wall by making a tech executive list all the categories of data his company gathers, a different approach is needed.
It would be helpful to start from the premise that Google (and Facebook) siphon more than enough information on people’s online actions and habits in the real world. Ask Google to commit to collecting data only if people explicitly agree. (The default is often the opposite; user information like people’s searches, their physical location over time and websites they visit are collected by Google unless people explicitly tell Google to stop.) Ask Google (and Apple) to commit to auditing the data collection of all the apps people download on Android phones and iPhones and demand to know whether they sell location information. Let’s change the conversation from what tech companies do to what they need to stop or start doing about personal information.
Google also needs to change how it is talking about its controversial internal project evaluating whether and how to resume web search in China, which would require Google to censor information the government doesn’t like and hand over some user information to Beijing. Pichai was repeatedly asked why Google is exploring this China product given all the ways the company will have to compromise its long-articulated values.
Pichai repeatedly fell back to saying that this China project is “exploratory” and that Google will be transparent if it moves ahead. That’s not a good enough answer. He needs to say how many employees are working on this project, what Google’s criteria are for returning web search to China, and whether Google will build tools that will enable the Chinese government to surveil its own citizens without their knowledge.
To be clear, I don’t want to repeat the false idea that members of Congress are old luddites who aren’t able or willing to understand how tech companies work. Some members of Congress asked great questions on Tuesday. Some of them did not. This format, however, does not feel like a good way to decide public policy. The thorny topic of the power of big technology companies deserves much better than this from all sides.
Maybe live hearings are a terrible approach and should be replaced by written questions and answers with opportunities for pointed follow up.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Daniel Niemi at dniemi1@bloomberg.net
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
Shira Ovide is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering technology. She previously was a reporter for the Wall Street Journal.
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