Google's top Washington lobbyist stepping down
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[November 03, 2018]
By David Shepardson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Google's top
lobbyist in Washington is stepping aside as the U.S. technology company
faces criticism on Capitol Hill on issues including privacy protections
and its investment plans in China, the Alphabet Inc <GOOGL.O> unit said
on Friday.
Former U.S. Representative Susan Molinari, who has run Google's
Washington office and its Americas Policy team for nearly seven years,
will move to a new job as senior advisor in January, the company said in
a statement. Google is seeking a new head of Americas policy, it added.
"I am comfortable in making the transition," said Molinari, 60, who had
served as vice chair of the House Republican Conference before resigning
from Congress in 1997 to become a Saturday morning news anchor on CBS.
She added in a statement that she had been "looking for the right time
to step back."

Alphabet faced criticism from Republicans and Democrats for refusing to
send parent company Chief Executive Larry Page or Google CEO Sundar
Pichai to a Senate hearing in September, where senators left an empty
chair next to Twitter Inc's <TWTR.N> CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook Inc's
<FB.O> chief operating officer.
Pichai in September canceled a trip to Asia to meet with lawmakers and
agreed to testify before Congress later this year.
Google also has faced this year numerous accusations from President
Donald Trump and other Republican leaders that its search results
promote content critical of conservatives and demote right-leaning news
outlets, a charge that Google denies.
Lawmakers have questioned whether it would accept China's censorship
demands as it considers reentering the search engine market there. Last
month, Vice President Mike Pence called on Google to abandon the Chinese
project.
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Susan Molinari, Vice President of Public Policy and Government
Relations at Google (L) walks with Brazil President Dilma Rousseff
as she arrives at Google headquarters in Mountain View, California
July 1, 2015. REUTERS/Stephen Lam

Pichai said at a forum on Thursday that the project was "more of an experiment"
and reiterated that there is "nothing imminent" on a whether it will launch a
search engine in China.
In June, Google hired Karan Bhatia as global head of policy from General
Electric Co <GE.N>. Bhatia served as deputy U.S. Trade Representative for former
President George W. Bush. The company also named Pablo Chavez, a Microsoft Corp
<MSFT.O> lobbyist and former senior aide to Republican John McCain, as another
senior lobbyist in June.
Alphabet said last month it would shut down the consumer version of its failed
social network Google+ and tighten its data-sharing policies after announcing
that the private profile data of at least 500,000 users might have been exposed
to hundreds of external developers.
"Google must be more forthcoming with the public and lawmakers if the company is
to maintain or regain the trust of the users of its services," three senior
Republicans told Google in an Oct. 11 letter. They said they were "especially
disappointed" that Google did not disclose the issue at a privacy hearing two
weeks earlier.
In 2012, Google agreed to pay a then-record $22.5 million civil penalty to
settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it misrepresented to users of Apple
Inc's <AAPL.O> Safari internet browser that it would not place tracking
"cookies" or serve them targeted ads.
(Reporting by David Shepardson; Additional reporting by Paresh Dave in San
Francisco; Editing by Richard Chang)
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