Alphabet executives to attend Trump tech meeting

epa04879733 The term 'Alphabet' is seen on a screen displaying Google's web search engine, in†Schwerin, Germany, 11 August 2015. Google Inc will form a conglomerate called Alphabet Inc to hold the internet giant's increasingly diversified business units and investments far beyond its search engine brand, the company said on 10 August 2015. Chief executive Larry Page said in a blog post that Alphabet would be a 'collection of companies' in which Google is the largest. 'This newer Google is a bit slimmed down, with the companies that are pretty far afield of our main Internet products contained in Alphabet instead,' he wrote. EPA/JENS†BUETTNER

 

Bloomberg

President-elect Donald Trump’s sit down with technology titans next week will have two marquee attendees: Alphabet Inc.’s Larry Page and Eric Schmidt.
Page, chief executive officer of the Google parent company, and Schmidt, the chairman, were planning on going to the meeting, a person familiar with the decision said late Friday. The person asked not to be identified because the decisions were not public. An Alphabet spokeswoman did not return a request for comment.
An invitation went out earlier
this week from members of Trump’s transition team, including venture capitalist Peter Thiel. Oracle Corp. co-CEO Safra Catz and Cisco Systems Inc. CEO Chuck Robbins have said they plan to attend. Technology news website Recode reported earlier that Page, Apple Inc. CEO Tim Cook and Facebook Inc. Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg will go, along with Intel Corp. CEO Brian Krzanich. Amazon.com Inc. CEO Jeff Bezos has also been invited and is likely to attend, Recode added.
While an agenda was not listed on the invitation, the discussion is expected to touch on issues, such as immigration and trade, where Trump’s positions during the campaign opposed most of the tech industry.
Alphabet has become a major lobbying force in Washington, and has a wide range of national policy interests. Those include taxes on offshore earnings, data encryption, autonomous vehicles, telecommunications spectrum and health care. Trump has proposed weakening net neutrality rules, a longstanding
priority for Google and other inte-rnet companies. The meeting, scheduled for 2 p.m. Dec. 14, will likely focus on possible repatriation of overseas earnings and corporate tax reform, said Rob Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. But it will primarily be a chance for tech’s leaders to find some common ground with an uncertain Administration.
“This is something of a mending fences, building bridges kind of meeting,” he said. “The goal may be to get Trump to be somewhat supportive of the tech industry.” Atkinson also said the meeting may address China, where several US tech companies have struggled to find a foothold. Google pulled its services from mainland China in 2010 primarily over concerns about censorship. Schmidt’s attendance at the round table is not surprising — the executive, who was Google CEO when it withdrew from China, is the company’s primary political and diplomatic emissary.

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