The Latest: House committee kicks of grilling of Google CEO

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Latest on Google CEO before Congress (all times local):

10:25 a.m.

A House committee has kicked off its grilling of Google CEO Sundar Pichai. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy is asking if tech companies are "serving as instruments of freedom or instruments of control" in the U.S. and beyond.

McCarthy, a California Republican, says Google had to testify because of the "widening gap of distrust" between tech companies and the American people.

Pichai is facing the Republican-majority committee before Democrats take control of the House in January. Lawmakers are asking him about alleged bias in the company's search results, as well as its reported plans to launch a censored search engine in China.

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3 a.m.

Google's CEO faces a grilling from U.S. lawmakers on how the web search giant handled an alarming data breach and whether it may bend to Chinese government censorship demands.

CEO Sundar Pichai's appearance Tuesday before the House Judiciary Committee comes after he angered members of a Senate panel in September by declining their invitation to testify about foreign governments' manipulation of online services to sway U.S. elections. Pichai's no-show at that hearing was marked by an empty chair for Google alongside the Facebook and Twitter executives.

Pichai went to Washington later in September to mend fences. He took part last week in a White House meeting with other tech industry executives that focused mainly on getting government and businesses working more closely on accelerating emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence.