Google was not present at the Senate Intelligence Committee session, and the chief executives of Twitter and Facebook, Jacques Dorsey and Charles Selzberg, were left alone before the board to defend the records of their companies.
Why do they hate Google?
Google's empty chair has led to growing anger among senators who want to punish the company for abandoning US military contracts, tolerant applications with China-backed censorship, and failing to respond to the elders' concerns by using the platform for political processes, Tom Feller as "a strategic error of infinite dimensions".
A series of exchanges of accusations between President Trump and the giant company in recent days has turned attention from Facebook to Google, after Attorney General Jeff Segis called to look at the technology companies' attempt to stifle the free exchange of ideas on their platforms.
Why on Google should worry?
Like any political move, it's hard to know where to start and where this threat ends, but it's serious. Google is in real danger here, be it antitrust or new regulatory processes.
Antitrust laws
Congress passed a law to expand the scope of platform liability for hosted content, and there are already demands for tougher legislation. Last week, Sen. Oren Hatch publicly called on the FTC to investigate Google's impact on protecting competition in the market.
This is particularly worrisome to Google, where the Federal Trade Commission will launch a series of hearings on competition and consumer privacy, which certainly puts the monopoly of technology charges at the forefront of the issues it will consider.
Political demands to control technology
There is also tremendous political pressure to take some sort of action to rein in technology companies. This can take many forms, including splitting Google into some of the companies being offered for public subscription, more anti-monopoly legal measures, or imposing new taxes such as those proposed by Senator Bernie Sander.
Fears of penetration
Google is also facing many of the problems that affected Facebook last year. The two companies are working to collect massive data, directing targeted ads. Both of them have the ability to direct information flows in ways that rebuild the economy and society. The Cambridge-Analytics scandal may have focused most of the attention on Facebook, but Google is not innocent of these charges because of the amount of information it has.
If Google knows these facts, the question remains: Does its recent move not to attend the Senate session mean that it has the ability to challenge the state and its institutions? Or will we see the end of Google's empire in the coming period?