The Senate Intelligence Committee invited leaders from Facebook, Twitter and Google to a hearing on their role in "protecting elections from misinformation and disinformation." Google instead offered to send Kent Walker, its senior vice president of Global Affairs. "The purpose of this hearing is to hear from senior leadership making the decisions, not those operationalizing them," a committee spokesperson told CNN. A source familiar with the committee's negotiations with Google told CNN that Google's unwillingness to send a senior executive was a rookie error. The company ultimately agreed to send its then-executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, to the hearing.

Source: CNN August 29, 2018 18:54 UTC