The Congressional hearings today on Google offered the Republicans an opportunity to repeatedly embarrass themselves on camera by demonstrating how little they understand modern technology. Their display of moaning and bellyaching about anti-conservative bias was systematically dismantled by Google CEO Sundar Pichai who — unlike the GOP Luddites —understands how his company actually operates.
After the Republicans had thoroughly exhausted their reserves of imagined victimhood, Representative Ted Lieu (D-CA) addressed the room. Lieu, an outspoken critic of the Trump administration and the general cruelty and incompetence of the modern GOP, started off by producing printouts of a Google search he ran on Representative Steve Scalise (R-LA).
Lieu showed that the first news stories to pop up were positive coverage, mostly about Scalise’s new book. The Democratic Congressman then explained that Google doesn’t individually pick what pops up when users search a specific person or topic. They aren’t curating the results with any kind of political agenda in mind. Pichai agreed with him.
Next, Lieu did a live Google search for Representative Steve King (R-IA). The first news story to pop up was negative coverage of King’s racist comments. Again, Lieu explained that the story didn’t pop up because Google wanted to force it on people, but because it was a relevant article about Kings’ recent behavior.
Lieu ended his comments by going for the jugular, exposing the entire tawdry Republican charade by laying the blame for the negative coverage squarely at their feet.
“So let me just conclude here by stating the obvious. If you want positive search results, do positive things. If you don’ want negative search results, don’t do negative things. And to 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,” Lieu said.
Watch below.
https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1072576369299738624
.@tedlieu admonishes colleagues: “If you want positive search results, do positive things. If you don’t want negative search results, don’t do negative things. And to my colleagues, if you’re getting bad results, don’t blame Google or Twitter, consider blaming yourself.” 🔥🔥🔥 pic.twitter.com/Gby0jZbL8x
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 11, 2018
