After Zuckerberg hearings, Congress broadens focus to Google, Twitter

After months of intense pressure, lawmakers finally got their wish: They gave Mark Zuckerberg a public roasting. The CEO of Facebook testified this week in two congressional hearings, which lasted nearly ten hours over two days.

The hearings, before both the Senate and the House, appeared to be a win for Facebook. Observers noted that Zuckerberg performed strongly, appeared confident and competent, and didn't tick off any lawmakers too badly. Facebook's stock, which had taken a tumble amid a major data privacy scandal, even rebounded during the proceedings.

That may be good for Facebook, but it could mean new headaches for other companies. Namely, Google and Twitter.

Zuckerberg landed in the hot seat specifically because of a controversy over Cambridge Analytica, a digital consultancy with ties to the Trump presidential campaign that harvested the data of up to 87 million Facebook users without their permission.

The scandal has shone a spotlight on the trove of data the company has on all of us, and how ripe it is for abuse. (Facebook uses the data to sell ads.) But the social network is far from the only tech company that has tons of personal information on people all over the world. Google, for example, stores information on you based on things like your search history, Gmail account and Google Maps queries. Both Google and Twitter are ad-based as well, and they've been under fire from lawmakers before for abuse on their platforms.

Google didn't respond to a request for comment. Twitter declined to comment.

Last November, all three companies testified before Congress regarding the integrity of their platforms. But none of them sent their CEOs. Instead, they tasked their top lawyers with enduring the public scolding. The move didn't sit well with lawmakers who wanted answers from the very top of the companies and not polished lawyers who know just what to say.

It was a diss to Congress, but it was a united diss. Now that Zuckerberg has sat in the hot seat -- a gesture of atonement as much as anything else -- you can expect lawmakers to ramp up scrutiny of Google and Twitter.