Google CEO Pichai called to answer questions before US Congress

Likely to have to answer questions on helping China's censors, political bias and anti trust

Google CEO Sundar Pichai will face a number of questions and allegations during a congressional hearing today.

An allegation of bias has been made frequently by Donald Trump. He has claimed in that Google adjusts its search and is biased against conservative viewpoints and ideas. Trump has also stated Google distributes "fake news". However Google has denied any political bias. Others have claimed Google does not do enough to control extreme content.

Pichai stated in a written testimony: "I lead this company without political bias and work to ensure that our products continue to operate that way. To do otherwise would go against our core principles and our business interests."

Another issue that is likely to come up is Project Dragonfly, a censored version of Google search compliant with the Chinese government's laws and regulations on what can be shown online. Google left China in 2008 after refusing to censor its search results to comply with government regulations. However, in September it emerged the company has a secret team working on services for China.

Dragonfly will censor search terms about human rights, democracy, religion and peaceful protest while blocking particularly sensitive searches entirely. Its secret development led to high-profile protests from Google staff.

Project Dragonfly is also important because Google has repeatedly turned down contracts with the US military.

Data collection is another issue that will surely be addressed in the hearing, with Google allegedly collecting and storing more personal data than Facebook.

Pichai and Larry Page, CEO of Alphabet, Google's parent company, declined an invitation to attend a Senate select committee intelligence hearing in September, drawing allegations of high-handedness.

Google has a near monopoly on global search outside of China, handling 86.56 per cent of searches in the US and 92 per cent of global search traffic. It is projected to generate nearly $40 billion in revenue this year.