Regulate Google? Trump ‘Taking A Look’ As He Vents About ‘Rigged’ Searches
Source: San Francisco Chronicle, Michael Cabanatuan
Photo: Evan Vucci, Associated Press
President Trump took aim at Google in a burst of Tweets on Tuesday, accusing the company of rigging its search results to promote negative stories about him.
Google disputed Trump’s assertion, saying it doesn’t “bias our results toward any political ideology.”
“Google search results for “Trump News” shows only the viewing/reporting of Fake News Media,” Trump tweeted early Tuesday. “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?”
The president said 96 percent of stories about him were from “National Left-Wing Media, very dangerous.”
“They are controlling what we can & cannot see,” he wrote. “This is a very serious situation-will be addressed!”
Trump economic adviser Larry Kudlow, asked later whether the administration thinks there should be “some form of regulation for Google,” told reporters, “We’ll let you know. We’re taking a look at it.”
Google, in a statement, disputed Trump’s assertions, saying it does not skew its search results to advance a political agenda.
“When users type queries into the Google Search bar, our goal is to make sure they receive the most relevant answers in a matter of seconds,” the Mountain View company said.
“Search is not used to set a political agenda and we don’t bias our results toward any political ideology,” Google said. “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.”
The Political Punch newsletter publishes Tuesdays and Thursdays between noon and 3 p.m. It is produced by the staff of The San Francisco Chronicle and edited by politics editor Trapper Byrne. Email: tbyrne@sfchronicle.com