That's not what happened. The question was asking why a child saw a family member in an ad while playing a game. The Congressman just held up an iPhone while asking but it had nothing to do with the hardware.

Of course there are numerous factors that may have contributed to the ad (and maybe Google wasn't involved) but they went with the smartass answer and the media ran with that narrative instead. It's not the greatest question but it's much more valid than what people are assuming it was.

Video of the question (and notice the title): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmuROTmazco&t=60

He does specifically say "how does that show up on a 7 year old's iPhone" at 1:30, and those words will be entered into the record, which is probably why Sundar responded with that.

iPhone claims aside, that's just a terrible question. Doesn't know what type of phone it was, doesn't know what type of game they were playing, doesn't give any details on the sort of photo shown or the ad copy shown. By all likelihood it sounds like this was a Facebook ad because of FB's "Social Ads" policy does use profile pictures of people on your friends list in their ads. On top of that, kids are not the smartest or most honest. It could have been a picture of any old man that looks similar and she assumes it's her grandpa. It could be a made-up story entirely.

No, it's not a terrible question. It is a general question about the business of online advertising, something that Sundar Pichai is unquestionably an expert about since he is the CEO of the largest company in the world that sells online advertising, and for all you know it could have been a web game that the grand daughter was playing in a chrome browser.

A reasonable, non-combative answer to this question may have been something along the lines of:

Senator, ad providers have little control over what the content of the ads that are going into these applications is. While I'm not sure what the specific ad that your granddaughter saw was, I can tell you that at google, there is a system where a user can report an ad as inappropriate. Again I'm not sure what the specific ad that you saw was, or if it was part of google's advertising platform, but if it was, you could have reported that to google for review, and I can understand why that would have been an uncomfortable experience for you.

Strong disagree, it's a terrible question, most likely not entirely factual, and there's no reason to dignify it with an in depth answer as it would require breaking down multiple company's ad ecosystems for one question. You're re-interpreting the question as something he didn't actually say. The question, as it is in the official record is "how does that show up on a 7 year old's iPhone".

> Senator, ad providers have little control over what the content of the ads that are going into these applications is.

This isn't really true, and also if interpreted in the most negative way it can be, this is opening up a big can of worms that isn't true. To say that they have little control over whether an ad somehow finds a picture of your grandfather and shows it to you is just straight up false. The only ad network where this is possible is Facebook and the advertisers do not get access to those images or know what names they are using to affiliate with their ads. Only that they can show names from a user's friends list.

I still think the most likely assumption is that the ad showed an old man and the 7 year old assumes any elderly man is her grandpa, or that the congressman made up the scenario based on something similar happening (seeing an ad in a facebook feed with a photo of the grandpa). It's a combative question and deserves a combative answer.

It's like when my mom calls me to say her iPhone is showing an error on the screen, but she can't remember what it was. So I ask her to write it down on a piece of paper and then call me next time it happens. It is always

"A new version of iOS is available for your device. Press OK to upgrade to iOS x.x.x."

Edit: If they were chatting at the bar about how ad networks work, it's one thing. But this is a congressional hearing and there's no reason you should need to potentially implicate yourself on a situation that doesn't even exist.

Let's look at the possible interpretations of the officially recorded question and see if we can figure out what the congressman meant.

Question: "how does this show up on a 7 year olds iPhone".

Interpretation 1:

>"How does this show up on a 7 year olds iPhone"

Senator, the iphone has a component on the front of it called an LED screen. LED stands for "light emitting diode", and the screen itself, which is similar in composition to a piece of glass, contains millions of these LEDs. The software in the phone selectively turns these LEDs (called pixels) on and off in patterns which your eyes interpret as images and text.

Interpretation 2:

>"How does this show up on a 7 year olds iphone"

Senator, there is a complex system of interactions between the user and the device they are using which influences the things that show up on the phone. I'm not sure what specific actions your grand daughter took to cause that specific ad to show up on her phone; one of the goals of interface design is to allow the user to precisely indicate to the device or software system what it is that they wish to see, or have the system produce. Likely there were some actions that your grand daughter took that caused the ad you are concerned about to appear, and some of these actions were likely tracked as a part of an advertising network which takes into account previous actions, location, browsing histo..

<Speaker the senators time is expired>

Interpretation 3:

>"How does this show up on a 7 year olds iphone"

Senator I am not sure how the age of your granddaughter is effecting that advertisements that she is seeing in this specific case, however I can tell you that at google, age is certainly a part of the algorithm we use to select which ads we show to children.

Interpretation 4:

>"How does this show up on a 7 year olds iphone"

Senator my company doesn't make the iphone.

> possible interpretations of the officially recorded question and see if we can figure out what the congressman meant.

This is not how things work legally. If they want better answers they need better questions. It's not about interpreting what they meant but never actually said. Especially when what they said it accusatory of Google and very likely false. He asked a terrible question, and you're bending over backwards to interpret it in the most charitable way possible. That's fine on HN, or in a group of friends. That is not how things work at a congressional hearing. If I was Sundar, my answer would be that without photographic proof I don't believe this ever actually happened.

Cheers to whomever is downvoting my responses. It doesn't change the fact that it was a bad question and it got a deservedly snarky answer. I'm leaving this thread, it's clear most people here don't want to understand ads and just want to be angry at the big corp.

I do make a habit of trying to understand what somebody meant instead of trying to twist their words into something inflammatory.

It’s worked out really well for me so far.

Yes it's lacking too much context. Google's CEO probably didn't intend to be so dismissive but stalled since there wasn't a clear answer, and the statement ended up being snarky enough to move focus from the question to the "old people are bad at tech" bias, which was then reinforced by the media.

It's unfortunate but it shows just how bad the understanding is on all sides, and why these corporations can get away with so much. The most recent hearings this year revealed how much training these CEOs get and how adept they are at maneuvering around any real investigation.

Watched the video, and there was just a random guy dressed up with a mustache and top hat sitting behind the camera during the entire hearing?

Yes. He shows up in many hearings.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/monopoly-m...

How does this happen two different comments about one incident captured on video.

Because people don't watch the original video, they read spin articles about the incident.

Read the comments on the video. People don't really comprehend much of the content they consume and are easily steered by headlines.

The kid dressed up like the monopoly man in the background was a welcomed surprise.

No... If I recall right, that was Steve King. Steve King was a congressman, not a senator. Maligning a single congressman does not invalidate the basic point that a lot of senators are making.

Or the entire Senate calling the wrong CEO in to testify?

https://money.cnn.com/2016/10/27/media/att-time-warner-senat...

Can you name one positive law with regards to tech that the government has passed in the last 20 years?

During the last hearing, many of the representatives were more concerned about Google and Facebook being “unfair” to conservatives. Well that and grilling Zuckerburg about Twitter’s practices.

That's not what the article you linked says. To the question though there really haven't been many federal laws regarding tech at all. It's kind of hard to find an example of anything that directly focuses on tech and has been around long enough to make a judgement whether it was good or bad.

There have been plenty of laws. The two most famous ones are the DMCA and COPPA.

And then there are the ones that were only stopped because of massive protests like SOPA and PIPA.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_SOPA_and_PIPA

Not to mention regulations that killed the concept of net Neutrality.

There are also constant mumblings about passing laws against encryption that the government can’t decrypt.

The Snowden leaks should scare anyone about giving the government more power.

It was in 1996, but there is also the CDA.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Decency_Act

> most of those senators are not the holders of truth when it comes to technology

They don’t have to be. Their staffers do.

I’ve worked with a number of staffers on these questions for about three years now. They’re some of the smartest people I’ve worked with in my career, which has centred around Wall Street and Silicon Valley.

So why aren't they the senators instead of the morons they back?

Because a senator should know how to listen to others. They cannot be an expert on everything. Heck, these folks are making rules about medicine, pollution, car safety, tech issues, teaching, school lunches, interstate highways, commerce, military, child toy standards, what sorts of meat to allow in, and lots of other things I can't think up off of the top of my head. No one can be an expert on all of them - why we would suddenly expect them all to be an expert on this is beyond me. IIRC, an education in law is pretty common, which would be expected.

(I know the system isn't perfect and not everyone listens to educated voices and in a perfect world, there would be a range of knowledge in the elected body itself).

Edited for a missed comma.

I think you missed the point - representatives should be expert (at a minimum) in HN interests or come from the same demographics (better) as HN commentators. Anything else means they are "morons", to use the word of the previous commentator.

You need to be a certain type of animal to be a successful politician. Especially in the US where the power per person in the senate especially is enormous.

The house of commons has 600 more MPs for 5x less population.

Because being smart is not a golden ticket or the only quality required to become a senator/politician.

The staffer is a specialist. Intimate knowledge of highway infrastructure, or technology issues alone do not make a senator. A senator is someone who manages a small cabal of specialist experts who collectively hold more knowledge than any one head could ever fit. The job can’t be done by one person, its a coordinated team effort.

would people actually vote for them?

Combining brains and charisma is very rare in a politician. Obama being the textbook example - senior law school lecturer but also has the emotional depth and natural charm.

I’d think the list is shorter of charismatic politicians who hadn’t gone to a top notch law school. Plenty use brains and charm. Even spineless hacks like Mitch McConnel know how to be charismatic around wealthy republicans, and are brilliant, just brilliantly evil.

And he was accused of being a “secret Muslim” trying to bring Sharia law by a large percentage of the population.

That and trying to use the military to “takeover” Texas.

Ironically enough, I think that's the problem that lobbyists were intended to mitigate. You can't expect legislators to be experts on every technical topic, but in an ideal world you could retain subject matter experts to give good information to any congressperson who needed it.

It's not a bad idea in theory, but you run into the classic problem of deciding how to define "good information".

I don't think lobbying is bad, the problem isn't lobbying, it is the money required to make senators listen to them. That is the element that is corrupting everything.

Also senators can, and often do is have experts and have them provide sworn statements about given subject.

Congresspeople do have access to experts. Their staffers are brilliant. The issue is that ultimately what motivates any politician is moneyed interests, and not collective good.

So the reasoning here is if there are dumb legislators we should just defer to Google on how they should be regulated?

No, we should defer to the career antitrust experts at the DOJ and FTC as well the academics who study anti-trust and competition (a mix of mostly legal and economic professors).

You mean the “career” experts that are just as beholden to the whims of the President?

Or in the case of the FTC that gave the cable companies more power and upheld states blocking municipal broadband and got rid of net neutrality?

Not defer to Google, but a smarter legislator.

I don't understand the issue completely, so the case may have merit but it's not like the current admin doesn't have an axe to grind with them. Might be just electioneering antics but look at this tweet: https://twitter.com/EricTrump/status/1303288007357796353

I'm pretty sure all of your politicians have axes to grind, for different reasons.

Google does make a smartphone, and if my parents are any example, every smartphone is an iPhone just like every gaming system is an xbox.

I don’t know, some people here seem pretty confident in the knowledge of senators etc. when it comes to calls for investigations into Apple.