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Sundar Pichai and Jeff Bezos head to Mar-a-Lago to schmooze with Trump from The Verge - All Posts RSS feed.
Sundar Pichai and Jeff Bezos head to Mar-a-Lago to schmooze with Trump
Two of tech’s biggest leaders have plans to meet with President-elect Donald Trump soon. The Information reports that Google CEO Sundar Pichai is flying to Palm Beach, Florida, on Thursday, and Trump has said Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is meeting with him next week.
Trump has had a tumultuous relationship with Google, claiming the search engine is “rigged” to hide positive coverage about him. However, in recent weeks, Trump claimed multiple times that Pichai called him on the phone. Pichai said during The New York Times DealBook Summit last week that the calls had “nothing to do” with the government’s antitrust cases against Google.
As reported by The Information, sources don’t expect Pichai to “make any direct overtures to Trump about the antitrust lawsuit or other regulatory topics.” Trump said in October he would “do something” about Google when asked whether he’d go as far as breaking the company up. Google declined to comment about Pichai’s reported visit.
Additionally, Trump confirmed that Bezos “is coming up next week” during an interview with CNBC on Thursday. Despite Trump’s feud with Amazon during his presidency, Bezos said he’s “very optimistic this time around.” The Verge reached out to Amazon with a request for comment but didn’t immediately hear back.
Pichai and Bezos aren’t the only tech leaders trying to smooth over their rocky histories with Trump. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg — who Trump threatened to put in prison — met for dinner at Mar-a-Lago in November. Meta also donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund, according to The Wall Street Journal.