Sen. Ted Cruz claimed Google was acting like villains from Star Wars after an NBC News article claimed the company had barred two conservative websites from earning ad revenue.
“Google today has become like the Empire in Star Wars,” Cruz, a Republican from Texas, told Fox News host Dana Perino on Wednesday. “What they’re doing with this step is testing the Death Star.”
On Tuesday, Google was accused of pulling the ad revenue for the Federalist and finance website ZeroHedge, leading many conservatives to allege a pattern of bias against websites that do not adhere to liberal political ideology. In a Tuesday night tweet addressing the article, Google said they warned the Federalist for having a comment section that was “dangerous or derogatory.”
Cruz, who earlier in the day sent a letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai questioning the company’s censorship standards, rejected the terms of Google’s argument, pointing to a number of left-wing outlets including HuffPost, Jezebel, and Salon, all of which allow comments on articles.
He accused Google of monopolizing free speech and said that it had become “evil” over the years.
“This is the latest escalation,” Cruz said. “Google is a monopoly. It has more control, more power over information, than any entity in the history of mankind. And you know, Google’s motto used to be ‘Don’t be evil.’ They deleted that motto. Now, their motto just seems to be ‘evil.'”
Cruz said if Google and others were not regulated in some fashion, they would continue to target news and opinion deemed unsavory by censorship boards.
“If Google has the ability to demonetize, not just individuals which they’ve been going after, but now media organizations,” he said. “That power, that’s a power to go after Fox News, that’s a power to go after any media organization they disagree with, and they cannot abuse their monopoly power to silence free speech. They need to stop this right now.”
