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Google could be represented by an empty chair at a Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday.
- Google is set to be empty-chaired by the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday during a crucial hearing on election interference.
- Sundar Pichai and Larry Page declined to give evidence alongside Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.
- Instead, the company will send its top lawyer, Kent Walker, to Washington to provide written testimony to senators.
- Empty chairing is not without precedent, but the stakes have rarely been so high, making Google's absence all the more pronounced.
There is little debate that election interference online is an existential threat to democracy. It played a role in the US presidential election two years ago, may have had some bearing over Britain's decision to leave the EU, and is an issue governments are wrestling with the world over.
It is why the top executives from Facebook, Twitter, and Google have been summoned by the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday, where they have been asked to give evidence on foreign influence operations on their platforms ahead of the US midterms in November.
Sheryl Sandberg will be representing for Facebook, following a PR blitz in which CEO Mark Zuckerberg has declared election meddling an "arms race" between good and evil. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey will also be in the firing line after a busy few weeks justifying his decision to allow conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to carry on tweeting.
Google, however, will likely be represented by an empty chair.
Both CEO Sundar Pichai and his boss, Alphabet CEO Larry Page, were reportedly invited to give evidence, but both declined. Instead, Google put forward its top lawyer, Kent Walker - an offer which the Senate Intelligence Committee has declined.
"Chances are there's going to be an empty chair there," the committee's vice chair, Senator Mark Warner, told CNBC last week. "I think there will be a lot more questions raised that could have been actually dealt with if they sent a senior decision-maker and not simply their counsel."
Business Insider has contacted Google for comment. In a statement to other media, the company said Walker will be in Washington to "deliver written testimony, brief members of Congress on our work, and answer any questions they have."
The empty chair device is largely an exercise in political theatre, but it's not without precedent. For example, former White House adviser Karl Rove failed to show up at a Judiciary Committee hearing in 2008, with an empty chair and a placard with his name appearing in his place. The same year, the former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith was also empty-chaired at a hearing.
But the stakes have rarely been so high, making Google's absence all the more pronounced.
And it's not just the issue of election interference that would benefit from transparency from Google. The company is mired in a multitude of rumbling scandals, from allegations of liberal bias and concerns over storing user location data, to big questions over its reported plans to launch a censored search engine in China.
Where answers should be forthcoming, it will be an inanimate piece of furniture that speaks loudest.
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