By Vivian Salama and Douglas MacMillan
BREAKING
* Trump Says Google, Twitter, Facebook Are 'Treading on Very,
Very Troubled Territory'
* Trump Says Google 'Has Really Taken Advantage of a Lot of
People'
* 'They Better Be Careful,' Trump Says of Google
* Trump Says 'Thousands' Have Complained About Google
Practices
* Trump Makes Remarks to Reporters In Oval Office in Response to
Question
-- Earlier article will update --
WASHINGTON -- President Trump on Tuesday accused Alphabet Inc.'s
Google search platform of elevating critical news stories about his
presidency at the expense of friendly conservative voices, adding
to the growing scrutiny of tech giants from policy makers.
Mr. Trump said on Twitter that Google search results for the
words "Trump news" returned results primarily from liberal media
outlets. "Google & others are suppressing voices of
Conservatives and hiding information and news that is good," he
wrote. He declared Google's practices to be a "very serious
situation" that will be addressed.
In a statement, a spokeswoman for Google said its search results
aren't biased toward a particular political ideology. "We
continually work to improve Google Search and we never rank search
results to manipulate political sentiment," the spokeswoman
said.
The allegations come as policy makers in Washington have voiced
concerns about a number of Google's practices, including whether
they are stifling competition and endangering the privacy of
billions of users. Members of Congress questioned Google and other
tech giants earlier this year over allegations that their platforms
favored liberal voices over conservative ones.
Kent Walker, Google's senior vice president for global affairs,
plans to testify about election interference before the U.S. Senate
Select Committee on Intelligence on Sept. 5, along with Twitter
Inc. Chief Executive Jack Dorsey and Facebook Inc. Chief Operating
Officer Sheryl Sandberg.
Last week, Sen. Richard Burr (R., N.C.), who heads that
committee, said he had rejected Google's offer to send Mr. Walker,
apparently in an effort to force a more-senior executive to appear
before lawmakers.
In his tweets Tuesday, President Trump questioned whether
Google's political bias may be "illegal" and didn't elaborate on
what he meant when he said the issue "will be addressed."
Asked to elaborate later on the administration's views on
potential regulation of the search giant, Lawrence Kudlow, the
director of Mr. Trump's National Economic Council, said, "We'll let
you know, we're taking a look at it."
Google, which forged close ties to Democrats under President
Obama, has lost some of its political clout under President Trump.
Google employees donated $1.6 million to Hillary Clinton's
campaign, about 80% more than the amount given by workers at any
other corporation, and its former Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt
helped set up companies to analyze political data for Mrs.
Clinton's campaign.
Republicans have criticized social-media sites such as Facebook
and Twitter over their treatment of conservatives on their
platforms. Last week, the president accused social-media platforms
of "silencing millions of people."
Earlier in the month, Mr. Trump also claimed that tech companies
are "totally discriminating against Republican/Conservative
voices," pledging that his administration "won't let that
happen."
Google News's search algorithm is opaque, and news media outlets
expend considerable energy and resources optimizing their online
content to win better placement in search results.
Mr. Trump's longstanding criticism of the media adds to the
difficulty of evaluating his claims. He has frequently charged that
news outlets broadly are biased against him, saying last month that
"a large percentage" of the media are "fake news," making it likely
that even a statistically neutral news aggregator would pull
heavily from sources he labels that way.
Google's search engine is calibrated to show a list of web links
a user is most likely to follow, based on which links were the most
popular with previous searches of the same keyword. The company
also takes into account where a user is located, what time of day
it is and other signals that help it tailor search results for each
individual user.
It's unlikely Google's system measures whether a particular news
article is right-leaning or left-leaning, said Steven Andres, a
professor of management information systems at San Diego State
University.
"They only categorize things by relevance," Dr. Andres said.
"They are trying to maximize profits."
Accusations that Google tampers with search results appeared
during the run up to the 2016 presidential election, when some
conservatives claimed that the technology giant was censoring
controversial subjects as part of an effort to purge the internet
of fake news reports. Pop-culture news website SourceFed also
posted a video alleging that Google's autocomplete service, which
tries to predict queries as users type, was biased toward Mrs.
Clinton.
According to the video, typing "Hillary Clinton cri" into a
Google search box yielded suggested queries related to crime
reform, crisis, and a crime bill. It didn't include the suggested
search "Hillary Clinton crimes," although Google statistics show
that search is more common than the suggested queries.
A 2016 analysis by online-search marketer CanIRank.com found
that 50 recent searches for political terms on Google surfaced more
liberal-leaning web pages than conservative ones, as rated by a
panel of four people.
In response to both the SourceFed video and the CanIRank.com
study, Google denied allegations of bias.
In recent weeks, tech giants Facebook Inc., Apple Inc., Alphabet
Inc.'s YouTube platform and Spotify Technology S.A. stripped their
sites of content from far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones,
saying the Infowars star had violated terms of service barring
certain hateful or offensive speech. Mr. Jones still retains his
Twitter account.
In April, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Robert Goodlatte
(R, Va.) warned tech executives in a hearing that while social
media companies were "exercising great care and discretion to
ensure that their services are not abused," there is a "fine line
between removing illegal activity and suppressing speech."
Write to Vivian Salama at Vivian.Salama@wsj.com and Douglas
Macmillan at Douglas.Macmillan@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
August 28, 2018 15:27 ET (19:27 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2018 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG)
Historical Stock Chart
From Apr 2024 to May 2024
Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG)
Historical Stock Chart
From May 2023 to May 2024