In what could be one of the most blatant acts of tech bias, Google’s Autocomplete feature has seemingly omitted suggested results related to the assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump. The incident raises serious concerns about Google’s influence over information accessibility and its potential role in shaping public perception through selective suppression of search results.
This…is…insane.
@Google is engaged in active election interference.
They are gas-lighting the American people & trying to erase the attempted assassination of Trump. pic.twitter.com/g2h8DzkDON
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) July 28, 2024
The New York Post reported that one of Google’s most important features appears to be downplaying one of the most important historical events in recent memory.
Google users were surprised to discover that the search engine’s “Autocomplete” was apparently omitting suggested results related to the assassination attempt against Donald Trump.
The anomaly quickly caught the attention of social media users, including a Texas congressman and Donald Trump Jr., who began sharing screenshots of their own examples showing Google search suggestions coming up empty for queries about the deadly Pennsylvania rally shooting.
There’s no mention of Trump even when the entire search term “the assassination attempt of” is typed into the Google homepage search bar.
The Post performed a series of test Google searches with the last names of US presidents who were killed or faced attempts on their lives followed by the letters “assassi” to see what autocomplete suggested, including John F. Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and Teddy Roosevelt. In each instance, a helpful list of recommended search terms related to the attempts on their lives sprang into view.
The tech giant has long been accused of using it’s massive market share to quietly shape public opinion. The Post noted this past February that “Media company AllSides’ latest bias analysis found that 63% of articles that appeared on Google News over two weeks were from left-leaning media outlets — a 2% increase from 2022, when 61% of articles on the aggregator were from liberal outlets.
By contrast, the number of right-leaning news sources picked up by Google News in 2023 was 6%, a relative improvement from the paltry 3% the previous year.
After looking at roughly 500 articles curated on Google News’ homepage, AllSides found that 16% come from left-leaning CNN, while 12% came from the equally liberal New York Times.
Of the top 10 news sites Google News aggregates from, eight of them lean left — including Yahoo! News, CBS, Associated Press and NBC, according to AllSides.”
Breitbart reported in 2018 that “a video recorded by Google shortly after the 2016 presidential election reveals an atmosphere of panic and dismay amongst the tech giant’s leadership, coupled with a determination to thwart both the Trump agenda and the broader populist movement emerging around the globe.”
Google suppressing searches about Trump shouldn’t shock anyone.
Remember when their executives cried and melted down after he won in 2016? pic.twitter.com/q2vdqnUBLv
— Tim Young (@TimRunsHisMouth) July 28, 2024
The outlet said “the video is a full recording of Google’s first all-hands meeting following the 2016 election (these weekly meetings are known inside the company as ‘TGIF’ or ‘Thank God It’s Friday’ meetings). Sent to Breitbart News by an anonymous source, it features co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, VPs Kent Walker and Eileen Naughton, CFO Ruth Porat, and CEO Sundar Pichai. It can be watched in full above. It can and should be watched in full above in order to get the full context of the meeting and the statements made.”
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