Former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has accused Google of only showing “bad stories” about him, threatening to have the internet giant prosecuted if he returns to the White House.
In a post on his Truth Social platform on Friday, September 27, 2024, Trump gave no evidence to back up his charge.
The former president claims that the search engine only returns positive information about his Democratic competitor, Vice President Kamala Harris.
Trump noted: “This is an illegal activity, and hopefully the Justice Department will criminally prosecute them for this blatant Interference of Elections.
“If not, and subject to the Laws of our Country, I will request their prosecution, at the maximum levels, when I win the election.”
Trump’s post came after a conservative group reported on what it said it found when doing a search on “Donald Trump presidential race 2024”.
Google said in response to an AFP inquiry: “Both campaign websites consistently appear at the top of Search for relevant and common search queries.
“This report looked at a single rare search term on a single day a few weeks ago, and even for that search, both candidates’ websites ranked in the top results on Google.”
Google has been adamant that it does not manipulate search results to favour any political candidate. The company does not disclose the inner workings of the software that powers its ubiquitous search engine. However, factors known to influence search results for news stories include the timeliness and popularity of topics.
Trump is at the centre of numerous criminal and civil cases in which he faces accusations including sexual abuse, paying hush money to a porn star, interfering with the 2020 election, and trying to thwart the peaceful transition of power after President Joe Biden defeated him.
