Following an accusation by president Trump that Google was “rigging” search results against him, providing as evidence a “Trump News” search which showed predominantly “left” media publications popping up in the search results…
… Google has responded.
As a reminder, first thing this morning, Trump tweeted that “Google search results for ‘Trump News’ shows only the viewing/reporting of Fake New Media. In other words, they have it RIGGED, for me & others, so that almost all stories & news is BAD, Fake CNN is prominent. Republican/Conservative & Fair Media is shut out. Illegal,” Trump said in his latest claim of bias by the media. 96% of results on “Trump News” are from National Left-Wing Media, very dangerous.”
Google search results for “Trump News” shows only the viewing/reporting of Fake New Media. In other words, they have it RIGGED, for me & others, so that almost all stories & news is BAD. Fake CNN is prominent. Republican/Conservative & Fair Media is shut out. Illegal? 96% of…
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 28, 2018
Following Trump’s tweet, his chief economic advisor Larry Kudlow told reporters outside of the White House this morning that the administration is “taking a look” at whether Google searches should be subject to government regulation.
Google has now responded, claiming that the company doesn’t “bias” its results toward any political ideology and that “search is not used to set a political agenda.” Google also hedged by saying that it periodically issues “hundreds of improvements to our algorithms” to ensure they surface “high-quality content in response to users’ queries.” It was unclear if Google considers only liberal websites as “high quality content.”
Google’s full response is below:
“Search is not used to set a political agenda and we don’t bias our results toward any political ideology”
“Every year, we issue hundreds of improvements to our algorithms to ensure they surface high-quality content in response to users’ queries. We continually work to improve Google Search and we never rank search results to manipulate political sentiment”
However, one can’t help but be skeptical considering that just before the 2016 presidential election, among the many leaks published by Wikileaks as part of its Podesta email campaign was Google’s “strategic plan” to help democrats win the election and track voters.
Google head Eric Schmidt’s secret strategic plan for the US election #PodestaEmails https://t.co/LskJODXyXn
More: https://t.co/ZUfh7WDAT5 pic.twitter.com/llq5G9kp5V
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) October 31, 2016
It is unlikely that Trump will be satisfied with Google’s sincere response.
via RSS https://ift.tt/2Pe7Xjb Tyler Durden