Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Computing
  3. News

Google responds to Trump’s tweet-rage: We didn’t rig search against you!

By

Google categorically rejected President Donald J. Trump’s claim that the search engine giant is using its position to manipulate search results in a politically biased manner. In a fiery tweet Tuesday morning, August 28, Trump slammed Google, claiming that the search engine favored news sources from sites that publish negative views on him in its search results.

Google search results for “Trump News” shows only the viewing/reporting of Fake News 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

“Google search results for ‘Trump News’ shows only the viewing/reporting of Fake New Media,” the President said in an initial tweet. “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…”

Recommended Videos

….results on “Trump News” are from National Left-Wing Media, very dangerous. Google & others are suppressing voices of Conservatives and hiding information and news that is good. They are controlling what we can & cannot see. This is a very serious situation-will be addressed!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 28, 2018

Related

Trump continued his rant in a second tweet: “….results on “Trump News” are from National Left-Wing Media, very dangerous. Google & others are suppressing voices of Conservatives and hiding information and news that is good. They are controlling what we can & cannot see. This is a very serious situation – will be addressed!”

Trump did not provide evidence to support his claims, and the president is likely referencing a recent news story published by conservative media outlet PJ Media bearing the headline, “96 Percent of Google Search Results for ‘Trump’ News Are from Liberal Media Outlets.” The claims made by Trump and PJ Media have since been refuted by Twitter users and reports on CNN, Gizmodo, and The Washington Post. These sites reported that one of the top search results for “Trump News” this morning comes from conservative Fox News, a fact that we can confirm in our own search for the same terms.

Google Search
Image used with permission by copyright holder

“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,” Google said in statement. “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.”

Trump’s administration will investigate whether Google is showing bias in its search results. The president’s tweet prompted Larry Kudlow, Trump’s chief economic adviser, to issue a statement saying that the administration is investigating Google. “We’re just gonna do some investigations, some analysis, that’s what we do,” he said. The White House has not issued an official statement on the president’s latest tweet-rage.

Google isn’t the first tech company to be in Trump’s crosshairs. Last month, Trump blasted Twitter for shadow banning conservatives. Like Google, Twitter denied Trump’s claim. Separately, lawmakers are also looking into social media and election interference, with the Senate Intelligence Committee set to hear testimony from Facebook, Twitter, and Google on September 5.

Editors’ Recommendations

Topics
Chuong Nguyen
Chuong Nguyen
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Silicon Valley-based technology reporter and Giants baseball fan who splits his time between Northern California and Southern…
Ancient Mayan city discovered via page 16 of Google search results
A Google logo sign at the top of a building.

Proceeding to even the second page of Google search results is rare enough, but going all the way to page 16 and then selecting an entry that leads to the discovery of a huge Mayan city that was lost for centuries under a jungle canopy ... well, that’s really something.

“I was on something like page 16 of Google search and found a laser survey done by a Mexican organization for environmental monitoring,” Luke Auld-Thomas, a Ph.D. student at Tulane University in Louisiana, said in comments reported by the BBC.

Read more
Google expands its AI search function, incorporates ads into Overviews on mobile
A woman paints while talking on her Google Pixel 7 Pro.

Google announced on Thursday that it is "taking another big leap forward" with an expansive round of AI-empowered updates for Google Search and AI Overview.
Earlier in the year, Google incorporated generative AI technology into its existing Lens app, which allows users to identify objects within a photograph and search the web for more information on them, so that the app will return an AI Overview based on what it sees rather than a list of potentially relevant websites. At the I/O conference in May, Google promised to expand that capability to video clips.
With Thursday's update, "you can use Lens to search by taking a video, and asking questions about the moving objects that you see," Google's announcement reads. The company suggests that the app could be used to, for example, provide personalized information about specific fish at an aquarium simply by taking a video and asking your question.
Whether this works on more complex subjects like analyzing your favorite NFL team's previous play or fast-moving objects like identifying makes and models of cars in traffic, remains to be seen. If you want to try the feature for yourself, it's available globally (though only in English) through the iOS and Android Google App. Navigate to the Search Lab and enroll in the “AI Overviews and more” experiment to get access.

You won't necessarily have to type out your question either. Lens now supports voice questions, which allows you to simply speak your query as you take a picture (or capture a video clip) rather than fumbling across your touchscreen in a dimly lit room. 
Your Lens-based shopping experience is also being updated. In addition to the links to visually similar products from retailers that Lens already provides, it will begin displaying "dramatically more helpful results," per the announcement. Those include reviews of the specific product you're looking at, price comparisons from across the web, and information on where to buy the item. 

Read more
Google will begin labeling AI-generated images in Search
Google Search on mobile

AI-generated images have become increasingly predominant in the results of Google searches in recent months, crowding out legitimate results and making it harder for users to find what they're actually looking for. In response, Google announced on Tuesday that it will begin labeling AI-generated and AI-edited image search results in the coming months.

The company will flag such content through the “About this image” window and it will be applied to Search, Google Lens, and Android's Circle to Search features. Google is also applying the technology to its ad services and is considering adding a similar flag to YouTube videos, but will "have more updates on that later in the year," per the announcement post.

Read more