‘Why does Google steal content?’: Sundar Pichai questioned at US antitrust hearing

Facing the heat of the Democrats and Republicans on
Wednesday in a much-anticipated Congressional hearing, Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet
and Google, was questioned about allegedly stealing content from honest businesses,
reported Reuters.

Among the four tech giants, Google and Facebook took
the sharpest jabs for alleged abuse of their market power.

Facebook Inc’s Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon.com Inc’s Jeff
Bezos, Google owner Alphabet Inc’s Sundar Pichai and Apple Inc’s Tim Cook answered a
range of accusations from lawmakers, via a videoconference hearing.

Democrat representative David Cicilline, chair of the
antitrust subcommittee, asked Pichai, “Why does Google steal content from
honest businesses?”

The Democrat representative alleged Google of stealing
reviews from Yelp Inc and threatening to delist it from search results if it
objected.

Responding to the allegation, Pichai asked the lawmakers to share the
specifics of the accusation. “We conduct ourselves to the highest
standards,” he added, disagreeing with the characterization that Google
steals content to win users.

Zuckerberg was asked about the company’s purchase of Instagram in 2012 and whether it was acquired
because it was a threat.

Zuckerberg responded that the deal had been reviewed
by the Federal Trade Commission and that Instagram at the time was a tiny
photo-sharing app rather than a social-media phenomenon. “People didn’t
think of them competing with us in that space,” he said.

This was the first time the four CEOs have
appeared together before lawmakers.