Google CEO Sundar Pichai’s testimony on the company’s social media practices may be postponed by a state funeral for President George H.W. Bush.
James Martin/CNET
Google CEO Sundar Pichai’s testimony next week before the House on the company’s social media practices may be postponed because of the state funeral for former President George H. W. Bush.
Pichai was originally scheduled to testify Wednesday before the House Judiciary Committee in Washington, DC, to address allegations of bias against conservatives on the company’s platforms. Pichai skipped a high-profile tech hearing in September that included Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.
A state funeral for Bush, who died Friday at the age of 94, is also scheduled for Wednesday at the National Cathedral in Washington.
Bob Goodlatte, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said in an interview with Fox News “Sunday Morning Futures” that he expected the hearing to be rescheduled for next week.
“But we expect that to occur and it’s very, very important that it do occur,” he said, according to a Reuters account of the interview.
Aside from questions of conservative bias, lawmakers are expected to ask Pichai about Project Dragonfly, an effort to build a censored search engine for China. Lawmakers are also expected to press Google on data collection, including a bug that left users’ personal information exposed on its Google Plus social network for two years. After the bug was disclosed, Google announced it would shut down the social network in August.
Google didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.