Is Google Favoring The Left Agenda? Trump Thinks So
On August 28, the Trump administration claimed it would start the task of regulating Google. This comes after claims by the president that the search engine was manipulating its search results to favor news stories that display Trump in a negative light.
On Twitter, the president claimed that Google shows biased stories.
“Google and others are suppressing voices of Conservatives,” he wrote.
This might include such results as Trump’s supposed election interference in 2016, reports on his golfing excursions, and his Manhattan living quarters where the average price of a single condo can run up to $1.9 million.
However, CNN and Google claim that Trump’s allegations are unfounded.
“Search is not used to set a political agenda and we don’t bias our results toward any political ideology. We continually work to improve Google Search and we never rank search results to manipulate political sentiment,” said one Google spokesperson in response.
On top of that, the Google search engine harbors over 90% of the searches performed across the globe, taking geographic location into account as well as the user’s browser history. As such, each user experiences different Google search results. Most data centers are also likely to upgrade their IT equipment after three years or so to keep up with the updates in tech and improve the user experience.
Regardless, because of Google’s secretive search algorithm, the economic adviser for the White House, Larry Kudlow says that they’re still going to look into it. Once their investigations come to a close, the administration hopes to determine whether or not Google should be regulated under federal jurisdiction.
This comes at a pivotal moment regarding search engines, however. On September 5, only one week after Trump’s allegations, some of the major executives from Google are set to testify on censorship; more importantly, they’re also going to discuss election interference.
Additionally, The Washington Post also reports that Trump’s tweets regarding Google have been beneficial to the 2018 election campaign. According to a recent post, the administration reached out to donors citing his attack on Google to get more money before the deadline. Other Republican candidates have jumped on board by purchasing fundraising ads on other forms of social media.
Whether or not this is a marketing stunt for the Republican party is unknown. However, as rumors regarding investigations into Google are spreading, social media presence is swarming to defend Google amidst the chaos. One user even shared a screenshot of Fox News at the top of their search results when searching for “Trump News.”