-Source-CNBC-
Sometimes an empty chair can speak volumes.
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence intentionally set up an unoccupied seat to shame Google parent company Alphabet at Wednesday's hearing on foreign meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
The committee wanted either Alphabet CEO Larry Page or Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai to testify alongside Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, but the company offered its top lawyer and senior vice president of global affairs, Kent Walker, instead. That decision rankled committee leaders Sen Mark Warner, D-Va., and Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., who rejected the substitution, hence the pointedly vacant chair.
"I'm disappointed Google decided against sending the right senior level executive," Burr, the chair of the committee, said in his opening remarks.
Warner, vice chair of the committee, echoed Burr's statement.
"I'm deeply disappointed that Google — one of the most influential digital platforms in the world – chose not to send its own top corporate leadership to engage this committee," Warner said.
While the committee wouldn't accept Google's counsel in lieu of Page or Pichai, Walker submitted testimony anyway and will be in Washington this week taking meetings and giving briefings, according to a Tuesday blog post. The testimony outlined Google's new guidelines for political ad disclosures and states that Google continues to remove bad actors, like the Kremlin-affiliated Internet Research Agency, that try to mislead users.
However, the Campaign for Accountability published a report on Tuesday that seemed to highlight the challenges of keeping deceptive content off of Google's platforms: The organization posed as the IRA and was still able to buy and target politically divisive advertising. Read more
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