| Agreed. It feels like this is two separate stories really. Maybe Larry Page is a recluse, an eccentric, a technical thinker, a background figure, or however you want to describe him. I can understand why someone who started out writing a search engine in their garage might not be the type who feels comfortable doing public speaking in front of the Senate. But we should disconnect the man from the company. Google certainly does need to be held to account, and does need to answer these questions, both to the public and to governments. At best, it's an organizational failure of Google to not allocate someone from upper management on this - it should really be Pichai, who is really the day-to-day boss at Google. At worst it's a deliberate act of the company to avoid questioning. The attention shouldn't be directed at one man not showing up to answer questions, but the huge company who doesn't feel that it's necessary to send any of it's senior management to answer these questions. Edit: Seems that Google did offer to send a senior legal executive, and the senate refused them. Point still stands that we need to separate the company from the man, but perhaps the senate is just as focused on the "big names" as the media. |
This just goes to show how much of a charade these hearings are.