Google has a history of burying Republican candidate sites and promoting their Democrat opponents in its search results.
Sometimes you'd have to scroll pages before you found Donald Trump's campaign site, for example. But Dan Schneider of Media Research Center says they got caught and have changed the algorithm. Type 'Kamala Harris presidential race 2024' into the Google search engine now, then type 'Donald Trump presidential race 2024.’
The results are improved, but still, to paraphrase Harris, represent political inequity.
“When you search for Kamala Harris' campaign website, it's going to be the top three of all of the search results. And Donald Trump's, it's going to be about the 6th place now, so huge improvement, it would appear.”
He says the search engine giant has just found another way to tip the scales.
“It's flooding the field with all kinds of really terrible newspaper stories about Donald Trump.”
In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2019, Dr. Robert Epstein, a research psychologist and lifelong Democrat, told members that Big Tech in its current form – Google more than others – presents a grave threat to democracy and human autonomy.
“Democracy as originally conceived cannot survive Big Tech as currently empowered,” Epstein said.
Now Schneider says before you get to either candidate's campaign web page, you have to wade through a bunch of news articles.
'Kiss pieces' for one side
“We consistently get terrible results for the Republicans while Google does wonderful kiss pieces for the Democrats.”
Because of its efforts Google is likely to be successful in swinging votes from Donald Trump to Kamala Harris, Schneider says.
It’s impact in 2020 was significant.
“Google, in the last election, swayed anywhere between six to eight million votes. It has a huge and powerful impact on our on our voting," Schneider says.
