Google Says its ‘Working on Improvements’ After Biased Search Results Spur Accusations of ‘Election Interference’

In a statement Tuesday, tech giant Google said it was “working on improvements” after being accused of engaging in “election interference” by censoring autocomplete suggestions related to former President Donald Trump, and favoring Kamala Harris in search results.

Conservatives noticed over the weekend that attempts to prompt Google’s autocomplete function to acknowledge the assassination attempt against the former president, yielded zero results.

Instead, the prompt “assassination attempt of president” in the search bar yielded autocomplete suggestions such as “Ford,” “Truman,” “Reagan,” “Bob Marley,” “Teddy Roosevelt,”  “John Paul II,” as well as even Obama and Biden. Attempts to trigger the autocomplete function to do its job by typing the first letter(s) of Trump, or the name “Donald” in the search bar also failed.

When “assassination attempt trum” was typed in, all autocomplete suggestions related to Harry Truman. Even when “assassination attempt Trump” was typed in, Google failed by bringing up no autocomplete suggestions at all.

Similarly, typing in “President Donald” in the search bar brought up Donald Duck and Ronald Reagan, but not the former president and 2024 Republican nominee.

“Wow, Google has a search ban on President Donald Trump!” billionaire Elon Musk wrote on his platform. “Election interference?”

 

 

Attempts to prompt Google’s autocomplete function to acknowledge the date of the assassination attempt against Trump were also fruitless. Writing “July 13” in the search bar brought up several important events that happened on that date—none of which had anything to do with the assassination attempt against Trump.

Additionally,  conservatives discovered that typing Donald Trump’s name in the search bar yielded mostly news stories pertaining to Kamala Harris.

Google said in its statement that the reason its autocomplete function failed to bring up information about the assassination attempt against Trump was because “it has built-in protections related to political violence — and those systems were out of date.”

The company said it was  “working on improvements” to update its search results.

“After the horrific events in Butler, PA, those predicted queries should have appeared but didn’t,” Google Communications posted on X. “Once the issue was flagged, we started working on improvements, and they’re already rolling out. You can see many relevant predictions now.”

 

Google went on to say that “a bug in the system” was preventing its autocomplete function to show relevant results for “President Donald.”

“This particular issue was a bug that spanned the political spectrum, also affecting queries for several past presidents, such as former President Obama, as you can see in the attached image,” Google Communications posted. “Typing ‘vice president k’ was also showing no predictions. We’ve made an update that has improved these predictions across the board.”

Google also addressed why searches for “Donald Trump” were returning news stories related to “Kamala Harris.”

“These labels are automatically generated based on related news topics, and they change over time,” Google Communications said. “They span the political spectrum as well: For example, a search for “Kamala Harris” showed Top Stories labeled with “Donald Trump,” because many articles cover the two of them together. You can see this happening across a range of topics, like the Olympics, other public figures, companies and more. Our goal is to help people get relevant results for their query.”

Google’s search engine appeared to be functioning better on that score too, Wednesday.

“Overall, these types of prediction and labeling systems are algorithmic. While our systems work very well most of the time, you can find predictions that may be unexpected or imperfect, and bugs will occur. Many platforms, including the one we’re posting on now, will show strange or incomplete predictions at various times. For our part, when issues come up, we will make improvements so you can find what you’re looking for, quickly and easily. We appreciate the feedback,” Google Communications posted.

Google didn’t address the “July 13” issue, but typing in the date now brings up several news stories related to the assassination attempt against Trump in that day.

Update:

Senator Roger Marshall (R-Kans.) on Wednesday announced an investigation into Google’s suppression and censorship of Donald Trump, firing off a letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai demanding documents and answers to a number of questions.