In a world where we get our morning headlines and funny cat videos from Google, Donald Trump has condemned Google as partisan. On Friday, the former president and the current Republican candidate, Trump accused Google of bias and said that the company was promoting his rival Kamala Harris, the Vice President of the United States.
As one might expect from Trump, he didn’t shy away from saying it. It is on his new social media platform named Truth Social where Trump came out gun blazing stating that if the Department of Justice does not prosecute Google, then he will do it—if he will be the next president of the United States. He’s ready to bring the hammer down on Google over election interference and throw the book at them.
What Sparked This?
What made Trump so angry then? Well, it all began with a study made by the Media Research Center (MRC) which is a conservative organization. They say that when people type ‘Donald Trump presidential race 2024’ in the Google search, Google was a bit biased. Cohort news items portraying Harris in a positive light appeared more frequently on the results list than items critical of her, while Trump’s campaign site could be found lurking somewhere in the depths of the online search.
And in this post, Trump had none of it, as far as indirect ways of expressing himself are concerned. He accused Google of “illegally” making a system to place negative stories of him while placing only good stories of “Comrade Kamala Harris”. Yes you are reading correctly, the “Comrade” was thrown in for good measure as if the world has now suddenly been transported to the time of the Cold War.
Google’s Response
Google was asked to give their side of the story and their representative could only reply with a “No, that’s not true.” They noted that Trump and Harris’s campaign websites always appear as top results when people type in simple and relatively connected search queries.
Google said that the MRC study analyzed an obscure search term one day, which isn’t even a blip on Google searches. Actually, they mentioned that even the president’s campaign website is listed on Google in a more superior position than search engines. Thus, it all looks quite innocent in their eyes.
Google also took time to make the whole world know that their search results change with what happens in the world. New articles are temporary, as most of them; the tendencies similar to the famous TikTok dance challenges. They claimed that their search engine is already grounded on this impartiality and it is not making any bias in its result for any candidate: be Trump, Harris, or anyone else.
What’s Next?
Whether Trump’s accusations will create any litigation at all is yet to be seen today. However, it is not the first time that Trump has blamed big technology industries for the problem. He has for long accused them of being anti-Conservative even when he was the president. And it appears that Google is the latest company to join the list.
And in the age when algorithms dictate what we encounter on the Internet, it is relatively easy to feel like everything is predetermined. However, be it true or false, it all comes down to time or rather more posts sharing on social media platforms.
