The White House will be hosting a meeting of tech companies — and Google CEO Sundar Pichai has agreed to attend, according to White House economic advisor Larry Kudlow.
“We’re going to have a little conference," Kudlow said, according to Reuters. "The president will preside over it. We will have big internet companies, big social media companies, search companies."
Kudlow added that the meeting will also have "some who are dissatisfied with those companies.”
Last week, Pichai attended a meeting with members of Congress to discuss concerns surrounding his company after President Donald Trump accused the tech giant in August of stifling conservative viewpoints in a series of tweets.
During that trip, Pichai also met with Kudlow, a meeting that Kudlow said went well.
“We had a great meeting, constructive back and forth.” Kudlow said while answering questions Tuesday on the White House driveway. “He committed to come back to the White House.”
A date has not been confirmed, but Kudlow told reporters that the meeting will be sometime around “mid-October.”
Google and Pichai had previously drawn criticism from Washington lawmakers for declining a request to send one of its senior executives to a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing. While Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey testified, an empty chair sat behind a “Google” placard.
Tech companies have been under growing political pressure over a variety of issues including how their companies have handled misinformation and foreign influence campaigns, their growing market power, and claims from conservatives of liberal bias.
Google has been a particular subject of conservative ire, with Trump claiming that the company had been rigging its search results to show negative news about him.
“Google & others are suppressing voices of Conservatives and hiding information and news that is good. They are controlling what we can & cannot see. This is a very serious situation-will be addressed!” Trump tweeted in August.
