The White House is examining whether Google searches should be subject to some form of government regulation, Larry Kudlow, President Trump’s top economic adviser, said Tuesday.
“We’re taking a look at it,” Kudlow told reporters outside the White House when questioned about whether Trump believes Google should be regulated.
Kudlow’s comments came after the president posted a pair of early morning tweets accusing Google of rigging its search results and suggesting the tech giant was breaking the law.
[New: Google to Trump: ‘We don’t bias our 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?” Trump tweeted.
The president also suggested he would take steps to address the alleged manipulation of Google’s search results, though he did not elaborate on what action he would take.
“96% of 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,” he continued. “They are controlling what we can & cannot see. This is a very serious situation-will be addressed.”
In a statement, Google denied that it skews its search results in regard to viewpoint.
“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,” a Google spokesperson said in a 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.”
