Google chief denies political bias claims

Google chief Sundar Pichai has faced accusations of political bias from US politicians.

Mr Pichai was being quizzed by members of the House Judiciary Committee about the way his tech firm runs it business.

Google was accused of having “programmed” bias against conservative views into its algorithms.

Mr Pichai denied the accusation saying he had “issues” with studies that claimed to show the firm’s search results excluded right-wing views.

Republican committee member Lamar Smith said conservative voices were being “muted” via Google’s search results.

“Such actions pose a grave threat to our democratic form of government,” he said.

“This does not happen by accident, it is baked in to the algorithms.”

Mr Pichai said independent studies had not uncovered any bias and added that his business was “transparent” about the way its search results were generated.

“We evaluate our studies and our research results,” said Mr Pichai.

“We have a wide variety of sources, from both left and right.”

Mr Pichai was also asked about the work Google was doing in China on the controversial “dragonfly” project.

This is believed to be a search engine drawn up under the oversight of the Chinese government that would censor topics at the behest of the regime.

Representative Sheila Jackson Lee suggested the work could “censor a Chinese person’s lifeline to democracy”.

She asked: “How can you do that?”

In response, Mr Pichai said: “Right now we have no plans to launch in China. We don’t have a search product there.

More From BBC: