Donald Trump Claims, “Something’s Wrong With Google”

Google appears to be having a rough day. On the day a US judge ruled against the company in the long-running antitrust case, there was more trouble for Google. Republican nominee Donald Trump, seemingly displeased with Google, has urged his supporters to stop using the search engine.

In an interview with video-game celebrity Adin Ross, Trump called for his supporters to stop using Google, labelling the search engine “illegitimate”. “Something’s wrong with Google,” Trump stated in the interview. “Everybody should maybe just go off Google, not use it.”

Trump was reportedly referring to claims from Tesla CEO Elon Musk and others that Google is interfering with efforts to find information about the former president. Last month, accusing Google of ‘election interference,’ Musk shared a screenshot of a ‘President Donald’ search on Google on social media site X and wrote, “Wow, Google has a search ban on President Donald Trump! Election interference?”

Donald Trump Jr also made similar claims, sharing an image on X that purportedly showed a Google search box with auto-complete options for a query on assassination attempts that did not mention Trump. Trump Jr termed it “intentional election interference from Google.”

Trump’s VP candidate, JD Vance, has also taken a critical stance towards Big Tech. Vance has questioned Meta Platforms’ ownership of both Facebook and Instagram as well as Google’s ownership of YouTube. The senator has reportedly also expressed concern about Google’s Gemini artificial intelligence project.

Responding to Musk’s accusation of ‘censoring’ searches about Donald Trump, Google issued a lengthy note on X, formerly Twitter. “Over the past few days, some people on X have posted claims that Search is ‘censoring’ or ‘banning’ particular terms. That’s not happening, and we want to set the record straight. The posts relate to our Autocomplete feature, which predicts queries to save you time. Autocomplete is just a tool to help you complete a search quickly. Regardless of what predictions it shows at any given moment, you can always search for whatever you want and get easy access to results, images and more,” Google stated.

This series of events reflects the growing tension between prominent political figures and major tech companies, highlighting concerns over the influence and power of these platforms in shaping public perception and access to information.