“Google CEO Had To Explain To Congress Why Googling ‘Idiot’ Shows Donald Trump”

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It’s weird to hear old guys who don’t understand tech at all try to tell a tech expert how his own company works.

Here’s a classic exchange:

LAMAR SMITH: You’ve never punished a Google employee for manipulating search results, is that right?

GOOGLE CEO SUNDAR PICHAI: It’s not even possible for an individual employee to do that.

SMITH: I disagree. I think humans can manipulate the process.

Now here’s the really good part – by bringing this matter up in a public forum, covered by every news site and many bloggers (even me), Smith just made it even MORE likely that a search for idiot will turn up a story about Trump – or about Lamar Smith! If a Google search for “idiot” should actually lead to Lamar Smith, the picture would certainly be convincing!

 

But here’s the really sad part: this simple, elderly fellow who can’t understand the very basic concepts behind a Google search, is (at least for a few more weeks) the chairman of the House Committee on Space, Science, and Technology!

Gee, I can’t imagine why American students keep falling farther behind the rest of the world in science.

At least Smith seemed alert enough to know who he was talking to. That’s an indication of genius by congressional standards. He seemed like Dr. Steven Hawking compared to Louis Gohmert, who complained to the CEO of Google about Wikipedia, or Steve King, who complained about Apple.

“Congressman, iPhone is made by a different company.”

Gohmert’s complaint at least sounded like something that really happened. In King’s case, he not only addressed his concerns to the wrong guy, but it was pretty obvious that he had totally fabricated his complaint, but was too tech-challenged to realize how transparent his lie was.