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Comment by propman | Hacker News Reader

The significant backlash from both left and right and the hubris is skipping the senate hearing combined with Trump’s executive order threatens to actually hurt Google, forcing him to show up. Google is the most powerful lobbyist in US history so they’re pretty immune to all this and control all legislation passed that pertains to them but with the public bipartisan backlash, maybe they feel threatened.

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Google had offered someone else to appear (their top lawyer). It's unclear when the senate committee decided to reject this person and require Sundar or Larry to show up. It's very possible he had other things already lined up that weren't easily changeable.

I wonder if they 'd offer to send their lawyer if the chinese had asked.

It's very possible he had other things already lined up that weren't easily changeable.

That alone would piss off any congressman/senator. Pretty sure anyone telling US Congress/Senate that "I can't show up because I have something more important lined up" is making a big mistake.

This is the lawmakers whose ego is rarely matched...

If every other tech CEO can show up, he can.

"I have other things going on" is not an excuse to blow off a DC committee meeting. Unless it's a life-threatening condition, you go.

And, no, your lawyer isn't the same thing. They want the head man to answer.

You can be thrown in jail for contempt of Congress.

Does anyone know if any CEO in the history of the nation has ever not shown up at one of these things?

In the US, we have rights and due process. Congress requested their presence, but it can't just force someone to show up for political theater out of nowhere. There's a process for subpoenas, and we have many laws protecting people (fifth amendment, sixth amendment, etc).

You can't be held in contempt of Congress for simply declining to show up to a hearing you were requested to attend. And, if they planned for a lawyer to come and at the last minute things changed, lack of preparedness is certainly a reason to excuse yourself.

Facebook sent their COO. Twitter sent their CEO. Kent Walker[0] is Google's CLO (legal officer) and SVP of Global Affairs.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_Walker

COO and CEO are both positions of people who make decisions about the direction and conduct of the company. Those are people useful to question.

Kent Walker is their head lawyer ("CLO") and head of PR ("SVP of Global Affairs"). His sole job is to help the actual decisionmakers get away with whatever they decided to do. No matter how many titles they give him, offering to send him will never be more than a literal slap in the face.

I don't think this argument is warranted. Corporate structure varies wildly among companies, especially among tech companies. You're right that General Counsel (here called Chief Legal Officer) isn't traditionally seen as on par with a C suite executive, but it may make sense for Google to send him especially if government affairs are handled by his reporting chain. By the way, I've never heard of PR being referred to as Global Affairs. In my experience that's typically a euphemism for a company's lobbying arm, which in this case would make a lot of sense, don't you think? PR at Google seems to be called "Communications" which is fairly standard in the Valley.

I may have over-simplified "Global Affairs" to "PR", but essentially, it means he's supposed to smooth over relations diplomatically with organizations, governments, people, etc. around the globe. Sure, that does sound exactly like who would speak to Congress, but again, like being a lawyer, global affairs doesn't make decisions for the company, it sells those decisions to other people.

Congress wanted to question the people who made decisions at these companies, and Google refused.

Mark Zuckerberg didn’t show up

He did show up to one earlier in the year when he and only he was asked to present himself. He didn't show up to the EU and/or UK hearings though.

iirc the CTO of FB showed up.

> Google is the most powerful lobbyist in US history

Interesting claim. Can you back it up?

Off the top of my head I would posit that the most powerful lobbyist in US history was the United Fruit Company, who successfully lobbied the US government to overthrow the democratically elected government of Guatemala. From [1]:

> Several historians have maintained that the lobbying of the UFC, and the expropriation of its lands, were the chief motivation for the U.S., strengthened by the financial ties of individuals within the Eisenhower administration to the UFC.

I'm genuinely very interested in seeing evidence that Google has more influence than the UFC!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27%C3%A...

Yeah, it doesn't even show up on the top spender list for the last 20 years:

https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php

Alphabet is #9 for the year of 2018, around Northrop Grumman, ATT, and the AMA.

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