When you search for something on Google, the results that are surfaced are based on a lot of things, with relevance and popularity being some of the key factors that are considered, or at least that’s what Google says, but it seems that not everyone is biting, and US President Donald Trump is one of them.In a report from Reuters, it appears that the White House has plans to investigate Google after Trump had accused Google of being biased by promoting negative news articles about him, while hiding what he claims is “fair media” coverage. He also suggested that the search results showed news from sources such as CNN and not conservative publications, going as far as hinting that this practice is “illegal”.
According to Trump, “I think Google is really taking advantage of our people. Google, and Twitter and Facebook, they are really treading on very, very troubled territory, and they have to be careful. It’s not fair to large portions of the population.” Trump’s economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, later told reports that the White House would be “taking a look” at Google, but declined to provide further details as to what that means.
Google has since responded to these allegations by saying, “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. 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.”
It should be noted that while Google’s statement might be true, the search engine giant has been accused of favoritism in the past, where some claim that search results tend to favor Google’s own products and services first.