Google’s new chief executive [...] Sundar Pichai makes his first trip as CEO to the European Union capital Thursday for the high-stakes visit with the competition commissioner who wields scepter-like power over the company’s future on the Continent.

Representatives from major tech firms Google, Facebook and Twitter have denied their digital platforms are "instrumental" in spreading terrorist ideology across the internet and stressed a firm commitment to combating online crime. 

Cohen suggested that despite the terrorist group’s comprehensive social media presence, it’s realistic for the U.S.to destroy it digitally. Specifically, he argued that the objective should be to marginalize the terrorists and push them to the periphery of the Internet.

Delivering reliable Internet access to a country that has more than 17,000 islands, which are scattered across a vast area of the Indian and Pacific Ocean, is a challenge. Luckily for folks in Indonesia, Google is ready to take on that challenge with its Project Loon, which brings Internet access to remote areas via a network of high-altitude balloons.

Web giants Google, Facebook, and Twitter have joined forces with a British charity in a bid to remove millions of indecent child images from the net. In a UK first, anti-abuse organization Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) has begun sharing lists of indecent images, identified by unique "hash" codes. Wider use of the photo-tagging system could be a "game changer" in the fight against pedophiles, the charity said.

Differing with Under Secretary Stengel’s more optimistic assessment, two senior Google executives said that ISIS’ voice is “a lot larger” and “a lot louder” on the Internet than the voice of its opponents in the U.S. and elsewhere.

Tech execs paid $245 to hear Hillary Clinton keynote a women’s tech conference in Silicon Valley Tuesday, but Clinton has as much to learn from her audience as they have to gain from her. As the former secretary of state prepares for a second presidential run, she’s hoping Silicon Valley will rub off on her – and fill her campaign coffers.

In the US, where rules on the disclosure are stricter, technology groups report far higher spending on lobbying. Google, for example, spent $8.85m in the first half of 2014 alone in the US – nearly four times what it said it spent lobbying the EU for the whole of 2013. Google declined to comment on this article. But its efforts in Europe are part of its “soft power” approach towards influencing policy makers.