Google’s chief executive Sundar Pichai, in a company-wide email, issued a stark warning to the employees on Monday (Nov. 4) saying that the company must be a “trusted source of information to people of every background and belief” whosoever wins the presidential elections, The Washington Post reported.
The email sent by Pichai is being seen as an effort being made by the Silicon Valley companies to remain involved in the politics of the United States through various issues like AI-generated disinformation and social media gimmicks. However, the priority of tech companies has been to avoid conflict with Trump and his supporters.
Trump vs Google
United States former president and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has time and again accused the search engine giant of being biased against him and promoting “bad stories about him”. In September, Trump had also promised that if he comes to power, he will prosecute the company over alleged election interference.
“It has been determined that Google has illegally used a system of only revealing and displaying bad stories about Donald J. Trump, some made up for this purpose while, at the same time, only revealing good stories about Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris,” Trump wrote a post on his social network Truth Social.
“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, and become president of the United States,” he was quoted as saying by Reuters.
Later, Trump said that Pichai called him and spoke about his popularity on Google search. He added that the CEO was among many notable business executives and billionaires who had met him in recent months.
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After facing accusations of letting false information spread online during the 2016 elections, political advertising was restricted by platforms like Google-owned YouTube and Meta-owned Facebook, and billions were spent to enhance content moderation. Most of the social media platforms had kicked out Trump after the January 6 US Capitol attack.
However, in the 2024 presidential campaign, the bans were removed by the tech companies and political content was reduced on Facebook and Instagram, and people were allowed to make claims regarding election fraud without any penalty on YouTube.
(With inputs from agencies)