“Google’s chief executive officer Sundar Pichai rejected claims of political bias against conservatives while emphasizing the American roots of the internet company in his first-ever appearance before Congress,” Jessica Guynn reports for USA TODAY. “Again and again, Pichai stressed during the Tuesday hearing that Google operates ‘without political bias,’ as Republican lawmakers hammered him over allegations that the search engine manipulates results to show conservatives in a negative light or suppresses the viewpoints of right-leaning voices.”
“A number of other questions from the House Judiciary Committee centered on Google’s massive collection of personal information, raising the issue of whether American consumers should consent to it, rather than forcing them to opt out of it,” Guynn reports. “Of particular interest to lawmakers was whether consumers understand how much and how often Google’s mobile Android operating system and Google apps collect data about their location. Pichai told lawmakers Google offers users controls to limit that kind of data collection but sidestepped questions on how Google exploits that data to sell advertising. He avoided making any commitments to altering Google’s privacy policies during the hearing that ran more than three hours.”
“President Donald Trump and his campaign manager, Brad Parscale, have accused Silicon Valley companies of liberal bias that has led to the suppression and censorship of conservative voices,” Guynn reports. “In August, Trump claimed search results for ‘Trump News’ were ‘RIGGED, for me & others, so that almost all stories & news is BAD.’ Google has repeatedly denied any political bias in Internet search 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? 96% of….
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 28, 2018
Read more in the full article here.
“Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief executive, said in an email to employees on Friday that the company has never and will never bias its search results for political purposes,” Kate Conger reported for The New York Times in September.
“Mr. Pichai’s message followed a report in The Wall Street Journal this week about an internal email thread from early 2017 in which Google employees discussed President Trump’s travel ban, enacted by executive order shortly after his inauguration,” Conger reported. “On an internal email thread at Google, employees discussed the possibility of including pro-immigration content in search, according to The Journal [Google Workers Discussed Tweaking Search Function to Counter Travel Ban – WSJ, Sept. 20, 2018].”
“‘Recent news stories reference an internal email to suggest that we would compromise the integrity of our Search results for a political end. This is absolutely false,’ Mr. Pichai wrote in the email, which was obtained by The New York Times,” Conger reported.
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Groupthink is the product of lazy minds.
Question everything.
SEE ALSO:
Congress to grill Google CEO about political bias; ‘Search engines can be used to suppress particular viewpoints’ – U.S. Congressman – November 28, 2018
Facebook fired top exec Palmer Luckey for supporting Donald Trump for President – November 12, 2018
U.S. Senator Warner: Tech regulation is coming, ‘the era of the wild west in social media is coming to an end’ – September 7, 2018
U.S. Justice Department says probing social media companies for stifling ‘free exchange of ideas’ – September 6, 2018
White House probes Google after President Trump accuses it of left-wing bias – August 29, 2018
President Trump attacks ‘left-wing’ Google search results – August 28, 2018
President Trump: ‘I would rather have fake news’ than censorship – August 22, 2018
ACLU: Apple’s ban of Alex Jones and Infowars could set dangerous social media precedent – August 22, 2018
President Trump blasts social media ‘censorship’ – August 18, 2018
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey: I ‘fully admit’ our bias is ‘more left-leaning’ – August 20, 2018
Apple is monitoring Alex Jones’ Infowars app for content violations as it becomes 3rd-most downloaded app this week – August 9, 2018
Alex Jones: Infowars has racked up 5.6 million new subscribers in the past 48 hours – August 8, 2018
Tim Cook sends Mark Zuckerberg, YouTube, and Spotify scrambling over Infowars’ Alex Jones – August 8, 2018
Apple’s ‘Infowars’ move thrusts tech giant into the debate over censoring content on internet platforms – August 6, 2018
Apple removes most of Alex Jones’ Infowars podcasts from iTunes Store – August 6, 2018
The Boston Globe Editorial Board: Break up Google – June 16, 2018
James Damore: Why I was fired by Google – August 12, 2017
European Union hits Google with record $2.73 billion fine for abusing internet search monopoly – June 27, 2017
Google’s Eric Schmidt wore staff badge at Hillary Clinton’s ‘victory’ party – November 16, 2016
WikiLeaks emails show extremely close relationship between Clinton campaign and Google’s Eric Schmidt – November 1, 2016
Eric Schmidt-backed startup stealthily working to put Hillary Clinton in the White House – October 9, 2015
Obama to reward Google’s Schmidt with Cabinet post? – December 5, 2012
Google outfoxes U.S. FCC – April 17, 2012
Google Street View cars grabbed locations of cellphones, computers – July 26, 2011
Consumer Watchdog calls for probe of Google’s inappropriate relationship with Obama administration – January 25, 2011
FCC cites Android ‘openness’ as reason for neutered ‘Net Neutrality’ – December 22, 2010
U.S. FCC approves so-called ‘net-neutrality’ regulations – December 21, 2010
Wired: Google, CIA Invest in ‘future’ of Web monitoring – July 29, 2010
Wonder when they’ll issue the indictment for him lying to congress, its so obvious they are biased, its not remotely hard to see with any political related search..
Heard on the news this afternoon the Google CEO was questioned WHY when using Google images the search word entered is ‘idiot’ pictures of President Trump top the results. The best part is the CEO could not answer the question and has NO CLUE. Gee, what a surprise. Yet earlier in his testimony repeatedly claimed no political bias. No bias, yeah right. For as much as I abhor government regulation, this is long overdue. And what are the Democrats on the committee saying? NOTHING. Hey, this gives us an unfair monopoly advantage in election season, so mum is the word. Not a surprise there either. When they defended that womanizing, cheating, intern sex on the job, LYING impeached Bill Clinton — they lost any shred of credibility. MeeToo, you have much work to do…
Blatant bias on the part of asupposed “news anchor”….
Your mistake is thinking Hannity is a “news anchor.”
Sean Hannity is a political commentator, not a news anchor.
You should learn the difference.
Indeed, it is good of you to confirm that Faux does not report news. It feeds propaganda from completely biased talking heads. College dropout Hannity’s only professional qualifications include working as a house painter and spouting fact free opinions on radio, books, and TeeVee. Clearly it doesn’t take brains or logic to fire up the Trump base. One wonders how much Hannity takes under the table from agents that want to divide the nation and “aid” the Trump circus.
“Your mistake is thinking Hannity is a “news anchor.”
FactChecker? You would not know facts if it hit you between the eyes. Sean Hannity is the most highly rated news anchor BY FAR on cable news. You confuse him with Don Lemonade, Wolfie Blitzed and Rachel Madcow…
Of course Google is biased. Their algorithm determines what results show up first. Humans built the algorithm. Humans are inherently biased.
This isn’t hard to fathom and only an idiot CEO would claim there is no bias.
Absolute common sense, well done. We need more of that…