Missouri’s Republican attorney general has said he is launching an investigation into Google over allegations it was censoring conservative speech, as the tech corporation dismissed the claims as “totally false”.
“I am launching an investigation into Google for censoring conservative speech during the most consequential election in our nation’s history,” Andrew Bailey said in a post on X, without citing any example or evidence for his censorship claim.
Bailey added in a statement to Fox: “We have reason to believe that Google is manipulating their search results to de-emphasise information about the Trump campaign prior to election day. I will not allow Google to interfere in the most consequential election in our nation’s history.”
In an email to Reuters, a Google spokesperson said “the claims are totally false”. It added: “Search serves all our users, and our business rests on showing useful information to everyone – no matter what their political beliefs are.”
Republicans have long claimed an anti-conservative bias on social media platforms with tech companies denying this.
Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, said last month he would seek the prosecution of Google if he won the election. Trump and his supporters have alleged without evidence that Google searches display only “bad stories” about the former US president.
In August, Trump lambasted Google for its alleged refusal to acknowledge and rectify the blocking of search results pertaining to an attempt on his life.
“Google has been very bad,” Trump told Fox. “They’ve been very irresponsible. And I have a feeling that Google’s going to be close to shutdown, because I don’t think Congress is going to take it. I really don’t think so. Google has to be careful.”
In 2022, the Republican National Committee initiated a legal action against Google, asserting that the company had been actively dampening its email solicitations in anticipation of midterm elections – an assertion that Google refuted.
The legal challenge claimed that Gmail had been guilty of “discriminatory” behaviour towards the RNC by unreasonably diverting the organisation’s emails to users’ spam folders. The Republican committee claimed its fundraising activities and initiatives aimed at mobilising voter turnout in crucial swing states had been hindered as a result.
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In August, the US district judge Daniel Calabretta, in Sacramento, California, dismissed the RNC’s lawsuit for a second time, and said the organisation would not be allowed to refile it. While expressing some sympathy with the RNC’s allegations, he said it had not made an adequate case that Google violated California’s law on unfair competition.
Google said it welcomed the court’s ruling, citing how the dismissal followed a bipartisan Federal Election Commission decision that found the company’s email platform was not politically biased.
Reuters contributed to this report