Pichai says ‘Google cares’, Bezos ‘can’t remember’ in Congressional hearing

Sundar Pichai squirms when asked whether he signed off on the company’s 2016 decision to merge data from the advertising company Double Click

Four big tech CEOs — Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai of Google and Tim Cook of Apple — pushed back against accusations during a US Congress panel hearing capping a yearlong investigation into these companies’ market domination online. Amid intense grilling on issues that centred on market power derived from uninhibited collection and access to data, all four CEOs focused their attention on the value of their innovations and services to consumers. They testified via video link to lawmakers in Washington, DC.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai struggled to deflect accusations of anti-conservative bias and retreated multiple times to a “Happy to engage with you” answer in response to questions that went deep into the working of the company’s mighty algorithms. Pichai squirmed when asked whether he signed off on the company’s 2016 decision to merge data from the advertising company Double Click — bought in 2007 — with Google’s own data. Rep. Val Demings described this move as one that effectively “destroyed users’ anonymity” on the internet.

ALSO READ: ‘They have too much power’: US lawmakers grill Big Tech as Trump weighs in

“I reviewed at a high level all the important decisions we make,” Pichai said. He talked up how Google “cares” about privacy and security of users and noted that Google no longer uses data from Gmail for ad targeting, a relatively recent change. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos repeatedly offered “I don’t remember” or “We are looking into it” as an answer to lawmaker concerns about how the company might be killing off small businesses, poaching ideas from competitors or employee testimony that there is “nobody enforcing” policies in a company that has become a “candy shop” of seller data.

My mother had me when she was 17: Jeff Bezos testifies before US Congress

Amazon founder and CEO talks about personal life and narrates the difficulties the company faced in initial years of its existence

International News: Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO, spoke about his personal life and narrated the difficulties his company faced in its initial years when he testified before the US Congress. “I’m Jeff Bezos. I founded ‘Amazon’ 26 years ago with the long-term mission of making it Earth’s most customer-centric company. My mom, Jackie, had me when she was a 17-year-old high school student in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Being pregnant in high school was not popular in Albuquerque in 1964. It was difficult for her,” he said in his testimony before the Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law .

The world’s richest man said that when the school tried to kick out his mother, his grandfather went to bat for her. “After some negotiation, the principal said, “OK, she can stay and finish high school, but she can’t do any extracurricular activities, and she can’t have a locker.” My grandfather took the deal, and my mother finished high school, though she wasn’t allowed to walk across the stage with her classmates to get her diploma,” he said. He further revealed that determined to keep up with her education, she enrolled in night school, picking classes led by professors who would let her bring an infant to class.

‘My dad’s name is Miguel’

“She would show up with two duffel bags–one full of textbooks, and one packed with diapers, bottles, and anything that would keep me interested and quiet for a few minutes. My dad’s name is Miguel. He adopted me when I was four years old,” said the Amazon CEO. “He was 16 when he came to the United States from Cuba as part of Operation Pedro Pan, shortly after Castro took over. My dad arrived in America alone. His parents felt he’d be safer here. His mom imagined America would be cold, so she made him a jacket sewn entirely out of cleaning cloths, the only material they had on hand,” added Bezos. “We still have that jacket; it hangs in my parents’ dining room.”

Amazon’s Jeff Bezos pledges $10 billion fund to tackle climate change

Climate change is the biggest threat to our planet,’ says Bezos, whose net worth is estimated to be around $130 billion

His company is often criticized for its environmental record, but Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon and the world’s richest man, said he was committing $10 billion to a new fund to tackle climate change. In a post to his 1.4 million followers on Instagram on Monday, the e-commerce tycoon said the Bezos Earth Fund would “fund scientists, activists, NGOs — any effort that offers a real possibility to help preserve and protect the natural world.”

“Climate change is the biggest threat to our planet,” said Bezos, whose net worth is estimated to be around $130 billion. Hundreds of Amazon employees last month signed a blog criticizing the online retail giant’s climate policies and demanding it do more to tackle climate change. Amazon has been accused of creating vast amounts of waste from the packaging it uses for doorstep deliveries, as well as for the greenhouse gas emissions from huge fleets of vehicles.

The company, which in December said its workforce had hit 750,000, has also been denounced over its carbon footprint because of the high energy consumption of its server farms for its lucrative cloud computing activities. “I want to work alongside others both to amplify known ways and to explore new ways of fighting the devastating impact of climate change on this planet we all share,” Bezos said in his announcement on Monday…

My mother had me when she was 17: Jeff Bezos testifies before US Congress

Amazon founder and CEO talks about personal life and narrates the difficulties the company faced in initial years of its existence

International News: Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO, spoke about his personal life and narrated the difficulties his company faced in its initial years when he testified before the US Congress. “I’m Jeff Bezos. I founded ‘Amazon’ 26 years ago with the long-term mission of making it Earth’s most customer-centric company. My mom, Jackie, had me when she was a 17-year-old high school student in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Being pregnant in high school was not popular in Albuquerque in 1964. It was difficult for her,” he said in his testimony before the Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law .

The world’s richest man said that when the school tried to kick out his mother, his grandfather went to bat for her. “After some negotiation, the principal said, “OK, she can stay and finish high school, but she can’t do any extracurricular activities, and she can’t have a locker.” My grandfather took the deal, and my mother finished high school, though she wasn’t allowed to walk across the stage with her classmates to get her diploma,” he said. He further revealed that determined to keep up with her education, she enrolled in night school, picking classes led by professors who would let her bring an infant to class.

‘My dad’s name is Miguel’

“She would show up with two duffel bags–one full of textbooks, and one packed with diapers, bottles, and anything that would keep me interested and quiet for a few minutes. My dad’s name is Miguel. He adopted me when I was four years old,” said the Amazon CEO. “He was 16 when he came to the United States from Cuba as part of Operation Pedro Pan, shortly after Castro took over. My dad arrived in America alone. His parents felt he’d be safer here. His mom imagined America would be cold, so she made him a jacket sewn entirely out of cleaning cloths, the only material they had on hand,” added Bezos. “We still have that jacket; it hangs in my parents’ dining room.”