Gadgetory

welcome to the 359 I'm Roger Jane I'm Joanie Saltzman Google CEO sundar Pichai appeared before the House of Representative to talk about well all things but mostly about political bias I spent three and a half hours testifying and we covered all three and half hours of it anything for you that stood out Joan Google and YouTube have very clear policies they're clearly defined and we publish them right you know that but like other than that that the fact that he said on multiple occasions that there's no political ideology that goes into their their algorithms you know the we thought that maybe this session would be a chance for Congress to kind of delve in a bunch of actually important topics like personal data collection what's happening in China and there was some of it but it felt like it was still dominated by this political bias question I windows issues that are more relevant maybe to mainstream consumers hmm um a lot of times it's handed handle didn't up really ham-fisted way like with personal data collection yes when congressman asked about it they don't realize that Google doesn't make iPhones right there we're seeing some clip of congressman ted poe holding up his iphone and like demanding that's enough which i tell him if he could be tracked location-wise if he walks 20 feet across the aisle part of the problem in what allowed to DiNardo kind of dodge the question was he was holding up an iphone which google doesn't make and yes if if that phone had google apps then yes he his location would be tracked but sundar was able to kind of darn it it kind of shows that like when they're asking these questions is not being that savvy about it yeah you need to have very tactical surgical smart questions for somebody as smart as the shy to really answer them and very few people are on this panel and yeah and not just search of the questions would be able to follow up with that with a good response because i think yeah there were a couple of times where I noticed the representatives had pointed questions that were clearly prepped for them right and when sundar serve offered up the response there was no fault to it yeah there was no there's no way to could it be critical about it it's a good point look there's uh those law back and forth about the political bias was it ted Lieu from california sort of called this a giant waste of time basically said if you want positive results do positive things which generally that's that's good advice on life we should do more positive things and then well I guess you know some of the stuff that we actually did learn about was a little bit from China right yeah mostly evaded questions said that you know there are no plans to launch in China but we did get some details more than a hundred people had worked on the product that way and it's interesting that when pressed to commit on whether or not they would outright dismiss was a censorship and surveillance of users hmm he denied he just said like we'd be open to engaging with people he didn't actually say you wouldn't like make that hard line in the sand saying that's a line we won't go yeah I just noticed like he kind of had he would go back to that line to get away from any questions that were particularly pointed now do you remember from when Sheryl Sandberg was testifying before Congress I remember she made a sort of a definitive statement about activities in China do you recall what that was I don't I remember it was kind of like the question was posed a little differently it was like would you participate in China under the circumstances that exist now and her answer was no yes that's not how they put it to sundar no and I think that's how I was able to get out of that crown and again speaks to the the kind of level of tech savvy right like no one really followed up on that like well you actually answer the question but yeah it was uh between that and I guess the personal data it just seemed like we didn't get a lot out of 3.5 hours no I mean anything any other surprises for you any I mean I agree with uh with representative Lu that a lot of it did feel like a big waste of time yeah it just it was a little frustrating cuz it felt like congressman after congressman who wanted to talk about the political bias thing we're like I know you're saying this stuff but I don't really believe you I'm just gonna and I'm gonna keep asking you the same question there were a couple of congressmen that just sort of like shouted in this guy they didn't ask any questions they just ranted for their allotted five minutes which is always gonna happen in these grandstanding sort of hearings but it's helpful if they're grandstanding isn't like butting up against incompetence about the subject matter right right the reality of the situation right all right that's that's it for us thankfully it's over more coverage check us out a scene I'm Roger Chang I'm Joey Sullivan thanks for listening as always thanks for joining us for the recording of the audio podcast you can subscribe to us using the links below now is the time to go ahead and send in your questions and comments any er thoughts and emotional takeaways from today's very in-depth session no but to be honest a lot of people have a lot of let's call it clout in this game being that it is heavily politically charged don't you know don't hold back we want to hear what you think for one I thought that he was I'm gonna go ahead and take it from my perspective which is like composition and video playback so he was more composed than Zuckerberg and they think they treated him more like an adult that way I'm gonna go ahead and put that one out there yeah I mean his responses were definitely more there was more finesse to it there was an opposed like you he clearly prepared for this I think sundar at least from the interactions I've seen with him in public I mean he's just generally a bit more composed he's like a better public speaker than Chuck is so there's less of that yeah I mean he answers the questions the way I mean boy I would really want him to answer yes exactly didn't offer up too much information he he kind of knew when to dodge I'll get back to you or I'll have my team get back to you yeah always very polite there was that one inner that one exchange where it kind of was the most tense you remember that near like the the notion of the Latino voter right basically the one of the representatives had asked about his represent Jordan who asked about correct yet the issue of getting the voter the Latino vote out in three in these states three key state three key states wording from an email by a Google yes who's like as you pointed out probably having the worst day ever right that's like the last thing you want to do is have your name appear in that context during a congressional hearing yeah the idea that like yeah we got folks out we we change the algorithms which we added new features to allow voters to either get to the polls easier or actually pay for some of the transportation in these 3k it's three key states and like the representative made the point like taking out those three words like everything else seemed fine those good corporate citizenship but then when you when you are being selective about what states you're you're going after that's when you kind of get in trouble it implies it implies the possibility that that person had political bias yes yeah and cenar like he was fairly quick to deny that this was a Google thing he was the least composed when he struggled the most to come up with a way to answer it that I know I would probably have struggled there I definitely think his Mo's or the least compose moment was Poe when he couldn't even fathom how to answer that question and to be fair neither could I 120 feet over here he was Google no I walked 20 feet over here definitely knew the answer that question but the fact that he held up his iPhone definitely gave him opened the door for him just basically say like I don't know I mean it's an iPhone that's not one of our things I mean realistically yes if he had Google's Google Maps if you had Gmail any number of Google services if they're very ubiquitous on almost every phone I mean you can't assume because technically they're not default you're right you'd have to install these phones at least one of the representatives said she didn't have any apps on her phone so I think that was a rhetorical or theoretical question I can't really I can't really I don't want to assume with any of these representatives but like if yeah if so technically he could he like was in the right to say like I can't really answer because you know you're in your testimony you don't want to make that assumption that's what a lawyer would tell you yeah and so I mean he did the right thing but also the fact that Poe holding up that iPhone just definitely elem danced around the topic oh yeah for sure honestly there were a lot of really good questions and commentary coming from the aisle today from a few candidates whose names are all kind of blending together in my head right now but there really were some fantastic grilling questions that need to be addressed but at the other side of it there was just a whole myriad of grumpy grandstanding yeah there was the one in particular I mean there's a there's a couple but the stuff about the political bias and then the questioning of Google staffers for their political bias was was calm point to me like it it seemed like I think it was representative king who I think had asked basically for Google to start investigating their employees for a political bias which how do you do that as a company do you like you can't you can I mean like that's there's I think they're literally laws okay so I don't really know how that would have worked in like yeah I think Congress served once like part of Congress basically wants Google to be this completely sterile non-political entity but it's made up of human beings let's say then they need to sterilize the entire like world they need to sterilize society because they're they're all they're made up of people people have their opinions they're you know they're and they're going to use Google and those opinions are going to rub off essentially right Google should be sterilized but the search results that it returns should not be sterilized at all in any way especially if they have a it's like conservative bias like we love free speech and our search results we don't love free speech at Google itself yeah right as long as it doesn't interfere with my own personal views and perspectives right yeah free speech is great when you agree with some of the questions were being asked like you know why all these negative search results in darken ceiba if you like look at the sort of the tenor and like how these things are looked at actively like there's some you know arguments made that that negative coverage is warranted honestly I was kind of hoping right there that sender was gonna launch into a two-hour tutorial on how cookies work well he did go through a definition of like going to the the Trump idiot thing or someone had asked why Trump an idiot are so linked together and se own because trolling yeah well no it's it's it's essentially it's Google bombing right there if their folks out there who can manipulate search results by flooding the zone with idiot post linked to Trump and that will alter the the SEO so Trump an idiot come up together yeah and that shouldn't necessarily be on the Google people be like we're not responsible for that right exactly that's that's what the public feedback is now I always floors me like you know I'm trying to come up with a good analogy we're like okay so if a drug dealer transports some like crack cocaine or something like that to somebody and then that person who uses it dies is the taxi at fault like right okay all right yeah I'm working through it yeah yeah yeah I can see that the vehicle for terrible people should not be held accountable for tonight I do feel like there is there is literally to the argument that if Google is susceptible and exposed to being gamed in that way it has a responsibility to fix the loopholes that allow it to be gamed like if it's if if their mission is to return accurate and personally relevant information then and there's ways that people can make sure that they aren't then they need to fix that problem oh sure but then someone who's just gonna find another way to poke a different hole in it yeah I mean if Google doesn't do anything then they're just as complicit right yeah yeah there has to be a good-faith attempt at least to to make sure all this stuff is and biased objective yeah although to your your taxi analogy if the cab driver took extra money and like continued to take extra money then they would be liable that's a good point fair enough fair enough so I mean no to that analogy like if Google continues a profit from all the right the added engagement from negative content you know then they're they're just as complicit so knee-jerk take away today how much was theater how much was legitimate it's like mostly theater like percent theater mm-hmm yeah I mean it's pretty high up there like I said I thought some of us stuff from China was interesting and like I think we got like the tip of the iceberg on a smart discussion about personal data collection we weren't really there I mean so much of it was so dominated by the political bias stuff and again there's like it's sort of a back and forth right like Google says there aren't and then Congress says we don't believe you and it just it's that for like three hours yeah that was kind of what was frustrating about this process because it this really could have been an opportunity to talk about some of the real problems that Google faces it just ended up being not about that yeah like I think it would have been really interesting as someone you know like for example so you know push I said when there was a discussion of conspiracy theories on YouTube he said like it's something that we need to work better on you have to keep in mind we get 400 hours of content uploaded every minute a great question I wish that someone would ask is are you too big to even handle the responsibility that you have like have you created something that you cannot control and what are the implications of that you know yeah I would love to hear what his answer to that is because I don't know yeah lawyers I'm sure he doesn't know either he's good prepped for it either way a good day to be Alta Vista Yahoo Bing or DuckDuckGo never a good day to be Bing all right fine fine fine I heard somebody suggests that monopoly man was a big employee was it you oh I'm glad you mentioned that because Jay Petrie done it is asking did we see the monopoly me yes we did we ever yeah yes making his second camera I think he was at the Equifax hearing okay what I picked I think so from context right and then there was someone who was kicked out for holding a sign that was like the Google logo matched up with China yeah yeah we caught yeah yeah it was so anticlimactic I was expecting somebody to be straight-up rioting yeah like the police will take him away there would be a lot more chaos but it like ended so quickly that I didn't have a chance to process it I just want to say that China Google sign man has a better budget for graphic design than I do that's a nice sign right very nice sign I was very impressed this fantastic typography solid coloring a little bit on the small side would been more effective if it was you know an oversized banner on a stick you know how those things work but hey that was yeah that was what I was excited to see I could appreciate your respect for sign craftsmanship Brian before we wrap it up for the day our wall up is asking is there anything that comes out of this congressional hearing are there any changes in business yeah no I mean like in a perfect world the response would be like if you know lawmakers were unsatisfied with the answers that they received and they should craft legislation to fix it yeah but I mean I mean there were some questions about privacy like a legislation and since I was already talked about sort of Google's been supportive of it mostly because they know the writings of wall and yeah this is gonna happen there was at least what I think only one question on GDP are causing millions of I'm very aware of GDP are so I mean in terms of what will come out directly out of this particularly like the political bias nothing will come out of this no I think in terms of going proceeding with the privacy legislation and I don't know maybe this inspires more talk about legislation over a personal data collection beyond beyond privacy that that could happen too but like in terms of anything like tangible coming out of this no but we're probably get more of these I mean we've had three or four this year I have another so that was going to be the closing concept was what is going to be the next step do we have anybody else on the chopping block and what is specifically good specifically going to be next for Google after this I don't know who else is on the top they've trotted out the heads of two heads of facebook the head of Twitter now the head of Google yeah that's I mean a short game like Larry Page right yeah we're having Apple come but apples in a different sort of an apple right now is sort of viewed a lot more positive yeah they're I mean they're stuffs crazy expensive but they're you know right now they're not being accused of dismantling elections or the scrutinies mostly around like social media search results content and Apple doesn't play in that game quite as much right so it's been a little bit like that but we're not gonna have a follow-up hearing for for sundar I don't know well I don't know have a word it's interesting cuz it was only the House today and the Senate didn't participate so I'm I'm curious if the Senate gets his turn later but so far nothing's on the schedule so well cuz isn't that happen isn't that how it went for Zaki had one and then the other exactly right and so I I'm surprised the Senate didn't schedule something the same day or the day after I'm really hoping it doesn't happen because I don't want to sit through another three and a half hours of this no that would be nice but I don't know part of me thinks that maybe we won't see it just because it's not as much of a theater it's not as much of a circus as Todd trotting out the boy genius you know yeah I mean it is attractive having the sea of Google you know they're the answer to your questions it is but it's not as entertaining as watching a bunch of old cronies slap around you know little tuck keys are covered drop out it's luck Meister yeah well anyways whatever does happen stay tuned to seen it because we'll have all the updates we will plenty of updates next couple days but we are out of time though and thanks for joining us on The Late episode today following up today's scourge of a congressional house hearing reminder we only have two episodes left in the year that's gonna be tomorrow and Thursday at our normal schedule to London 15 a.m. Eastern time so hopefully you can join us for that and then we'll be back for CES the second week of January right what is that January 7th now would be coming in from the Senate stage at Tech West this year and then after that the 2019 full 3:59 reboot where I replace everybody with a I row oh then what you happy about that yeah it'd be nice to be able to sleep in in the morning right would be great all right Roger take us on out of here all right 359 s available on iTunes tune in Feedburner stitcher google play music google podcast the amazon echo of course cnn.com we will see you all tomorrow take care folks you you