Canadian Heritage Committee on April 20th, 2023

[Kent Walker]

We'll see what we can do on that.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Walker. I appreciate that.

I'm curious as to the results of the tests that you did here in Canada. What were the results?

[Richard Gingras]

As I mentioned earlier, we do thousands of tests to continue to evolve our products. Often, those tests are to help us in how we take and address misinformation or how we address our understanding of what our users see when they come to our sites. We do them constantly to improve what we do.

It is always important with such tests that we practise sound research methodology—for instance, randomizing the samples of people who see the tests. That is in line with what we also did in Canada. Our efforts in Canada were to understand the behaviours of our users with regard to the inclusion of sites that are referenced, as best we could tell, with the drafting of Bill C-18. For reasons of security, we don't release the results of such tests.

I can tell you, however, that at a very high level the tests confirmed several things. First of all, news queries are very small percentages to Google—less than 2% is typically the case—and there was no impact on our users with regard to non-news inquiries, whether that was seeking, for instance, information from academia, information from the government or, for that matter, how to find a local seafood restaurant.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Kevin Waugh]

Thank you, Ms. Thomas.

For the MPs in the room and also Lisa, I'll be a little more lenient with your time today because we have two hours here.

Mr. Gingras, along with Mr. Walker, I'm not going to cut you off in mid-sentence, but you know that this first round is six minutes long, so keep it in your head a bit. We did go over, but that's fine.

We go to the Liberal Party now and Mr. Housefather.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Walker and Mr. Gingras, thank you very much for being here today. I think it really shows Google's respect for the Canadian Parliament and the Canadian system. It's noted and appreciated.

I have a number of rounds of questions today, and I'm going to set out what I would hope that we would achieve.

When I ask a yes-or-no question, I'd appreciate a yes-or-no answer. When I ask other questions, I'd appreciate that the answers be succinct, because I have a lot of questions. If you don't know the answer, please just say you don't know and I will move on. I'm not here to try to push you to say things that you don't know.

If I'm asking you questions, Mr. Walker, I'm well aware of your dual business/legal role and I'm not looking to get privileged information. I'm not looking to attack the attorney-client privilege. If you think anything I'm delving into is privileged, just say so. Also, if I'm asking about law, I know that there are a lot of issues going on around the world. I'm not qualified outside of North America. If I'm asking about the Sherman act or the Competition Act, I'm not asking about foreign news sources and foreign laws.

Mr. Walker, at our last meeting, the Google witnesses acknowledged that you were aware of the plans to perform the tests that we're talking about in terms of preventing some Canadian users from seeing news. Approximately what percentage of tests at Google would you be made aware of in advance?

[Kent Walker]

I would just quickly say that we don't feel that we prevented Canadian users from seeing news. There are lots of different ways they could see news, but there was less appearance of news on our services.

I would say that I'm primarily made aware of tests that involve compliance with laws around the world. That could be the news sites in Spain, the Street View in Germany, the Australian situation or this situation. As Richard mentioned, we run thousands of tests every year, so it would be a relatively small percentage.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

I would estimate, given your position at Google in the C-suite, that it would be less than 1% of Google tests that anybody would think were important enough to escalate to you. Is that correct?

[Kent Walker]

Based on my knowledge of how many tests we do, that's probably right.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Is testing ever discussed at in the executive or board meetings at Alphabet or Google?

[Kent Walker]

Well, again, the tests that I'm aware of are overlaid between law, legal compliance, etc., so I don't want to get into the substance of any of those conversations, but I would say that at a broad level we've been clear that we do tests on a regular basis, and that's a public record, and the general notion that we do tests for compliance with law I think is also widely known.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Because just the way it came across at the first meeting—

[Kent Walker]

I'm sorry, sir; I lost the very beginning of your comment there.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

I was just saying that because of the way it came across at the last meeting, I want to now make clear that this testing was considered at the highest levels of Google and was one of the tests that would not be a normal standard test. It was something related specifically to Bill C-18.

The next question I have, Mr. Walker, is, did your team undertake any legal analysis to determine whether any Canadian law might be violated by the testing? I'm not asking for your advice: I'm asking only whether you undertook any discussion of that.

[Kent Walker]

I don't know the answer to the question. We have lawyers in Canada who are tasked with making sure we're compliant with Canadian law, and I don't recall any suggestion that there was a violation of Canadian law. To the contrary, we were trying to interpret this potential Canadian law to make sure we could comply with it and understand what the implications would be.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

For sure.

I think there have been various commentary that there might have been violations about the Competition Act and the Privacy Act. That's why I was looking to see if your team had done an analysis.

Do you know whether any outside counsel was retained to look into that before you undertook the test?

[Kent Walker]

I don't know the answer to the question. I can tell you that our belief has been that this is a normal business practice. When there's a tariff or a fee for a good or service, businesses will naturally look to see whether they should provide as much of that good or service.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

For sure.

Would you mind getting back to the committee on whether or not you did or did not seek that analysis? I want just a yes or no; you don't have to give me any further information.

[Kent Walker]

I understand. We'll follow up on that.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Thank you so much.

In terms of the first answer that Mr. Gingras gave to my colleague Ms. Harder with respect to her question about the results of the tests, that was my next question and he answered that. Thank you.

One thing that Mr. Gingras didn't get into was one thing I imagine Google was looking at in this test: how much revenue Google might lose if it prevented certain Canadian users from seeing certain news.

My question is on whether one of the elements of this test to determine that if Google undertook this action eventually.... And we can call it many different things, Mr. Walker; I totally understand that we'll have different words for it. Was one of the things you were concerned about in the test regarding how much revenue you might lose?

[Kent Walker]

I don't believe that was the focus. I think it's an important point, though, because news has great social value, but in many cases it doesn't have that much economic value.

As Richard mentioned, it's perhaps less than 2% of the queries. They tend to be the least monetizable queries—in other words, the queries that are less likely to have an ad next to them. If you do a query for a digital camera, you will see a number of ads for that, but if you do a query for how tall Mount Kilimanjaro is or what's going on in the Canadian Parliament today, you probably won't see many ads, and very few people will click on them. It's just not a very strong signal of commercial intent.

News has never been primarily about economic considerations for us. It's more a question of how we can best provide a range of information.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

I understand. I think it was more a question of whether or not you'd lose ancillary revenue by people losing your platform because they didn't have access to news on the platform.

My last question in this round is for Mr. Gingras. I know I'm running out of time.

I know that Google has its concerns with Bill C-18. If the U.S. Congress adopted a bill that was identical to Bill C-18 and was signed into law by the President, would Google's actions be identical to the ones you would take in Canada, or would you treat the U.S. differently?

[Richard Gingras]

That's an interesting question. Frankly, if the facts were all the same, then our considerations would be similar, if not identical.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Thank you both.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Kevin Waugh]

We'll move now to the Bloc Québécois, Martin Champoux, for six minutes.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Gingras, the question from my colleague, Mr. Housefather, was not about whether Google had the same concerns about similar legislation in the United States. Rather, it was about whether the company would have taken the same steps that Google took or planned to take in Canada. I consider the nuance important.

Would your actions have been as bold? For example, could any other time have been chosen for the tests you did this spring? I must say that the timing was rather peculiar.

Would you have had the same attitude and taken the same actions if a bill like C‑18 passed in the United States?