By Dan Calabrese —— Bio and Archives September 24, 2018
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The missive comes after a series of internal discussions by Google employees—appearing to show them reacting negatively to President Trump and his policies—were leaked to the public. Those disclosures fueled concerns the company’s search results favor liberal views over conservative ones, and follow previous calls from lawmakers to study whether search results are biased. An email chain from January 2017, days after the Trump administration instituted a controversial travel ban, showed Google employees discussing how they might be able to tweak the company’s search functions to show users how to contribute to pro-immigration organizations and contact lawmakers and government agencies, according to internal company emails. “Recent news stories reference an internal email to suggest that we would compromise the integrity of our search results for a political end,” Mr. Pichai said to employees. “This is absolutely false.”
Google said none of the suggested changes to search were implemented. A Google spokeswoman declined to comment on whether any employees have been disciplined because of the disclosures. Conservatives also recently expressed anger after Breitbart News released a video of a 2016 company meeting in which Google senior managers lamented Mr. Trump’s election victory. Google said the comments from executives in the video expressed the personal beliefs of those executives, not the company’s. In his memo, Mr. Pichai said, “Google itself is and must continue to be non-partisan.”Let’s say for the sake of discussion that Pichai actually means this. There is good reason to think he should, since it’s much better for Google’s business if people believe it directs its searches and other activities in straight-down-the-line fashion. It would make Google more widely trusted and more broadly respected. That’s better for business any way you look at it.
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