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Musk claims Google has a search ban on Trump

by on30 July 2024


Google says it appears to be in his head

Google has responded to Elon Musk, Donald Trump Jr., and other top GOP figures’ accusations that the search engine is interfering in the election with its autocomplete results.

On Sunday evening, several X users posted photos showing that when they typed “assassination attempt on” into Google’s search engine, the website only showed auto-complete results for assassination attempts on former President Ronald Reagan, Bob Marley, and other figures, omitting the 14 July attempt on former President Donald Trump’s life.  Probably because it was less important than the others.

It would appear that Google's autocomplete suggested “President Donald Duck” before “President Donald Trump" for some users. Which we would comment on, but it is too easy.

Elon Musk, who owns X, weighed in, posting a photo of him searching for “President Donald,” which suggested “President Donald Duck” before “President Donald Trump.”

“Wow, Google has a search ban on President Donald Trump,” Musk posted. “Election interference? Probably just a coincidence that Alphabet (Google) employees were the top donors to Biden,” he snarked.

However, then like many things that go on in Musk’s mind, they were unable to be replicated.

Fortune magazine, searching in incognito mode on Chrome , could not replicate Musk’s results: autocomplete did not show any predictions on searches for “President Donald” or “President Trump.” Autocomplete also did not show any predictions for “President Joe” or “President Biden.”

Never wanting to let facts to get in the way of a good rant. Several top GOP figures were enraged by the autocomplete results and immediately accused Google of “gaslighting” the American people and trying to influence the 2024 presidential election.

"Big Tech is trying to interfere in the election AGAIN to help Kamala Harris," Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., wrote on X. "We all know this is intentional election interference from Google. Truly despicable."

Google told Fortune that the company did not take “manual action” on the autocomplete predictions, and will be “working on improvements” to its autocomplete feature.

In terms of the assassination attempt queries, Google’s systems have “protections against Autocomplete predictions associated with political violence, which were working as intended before this horrific event occurred," the spokesperson wrote to Fortune. "We’re working on improvements to ensure our systems are more up to date."

As for the “Donald Duck” search that Musk highlighted, the spokesperson said that “autocomplete is currently not working as intended” in response to searches for the names of past presidents and the current vice president.

“We're looking into these anomalies and working on improvements, which we hope to roll out soon,” the spokesperson said. “Our autocomplete systems are dynamic, so predictions will change based on common and trending queries.”

Barry Schwartz, an expert on online search and the founder of the Search Engine Roundtable, a news service about search engines, told Fortune that Google’s response “makes sense.”

“You can search wherever you want, and Google will show it to you, but it won’t do an autocomplete 'suggestion' that you do violence towards politicians,” he said.

Last modified on 30 July 2024
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