When Google C.E.O. Sundar Pichai appeared on Capitol Hill in 2018, as part of a congressional inquisition of tech leaders, it was easy to poke fun at the spectacle. Lawmakers had clearly planned to knock Silicon Valley elites down a few pegs, but they lacked the vocabulary to land the big Perry Mason moment. And so we got comical episodes like when Rep. Ted Poe held up his phone and said, “If I move from here and go over there… does Google know that I moved to the left?” Pichai tried to explain that it depends on settings and apps opened, which caused the frustrated Texas Republican to blurt out, “It’s not a trick question!” Other times, Pichai was able to effectively parry the questions with feel-good bromides: “It’s really important to us for average consumers to understand [the information collected by Google]. We remind users to do a privacy checkup. And we make it obvious.”