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NEW YORK (CNNMoney) – Google CEO Sundar Pichai responded to reports that some staff had discussed refining research results to show a bias towards immigration.
"We do not sell our products to promote a political agenda," he wrote in an email to Google employees.
Pichai sent the note Friday after the Wall Street Journal got emails from Google employees about changing search results to show pro-immigration content.
These ideas, which were discussed at the time when the Trump administration was deploying a controversial travel ban for seven Muslim-majority countries, have never been implemented, the company said the week last.
"Recent articles refer to an internal email to suggest that we are compromising the integrity of our search results for a political purpose." This is absolutely false, Pichai said.
The email sent by Pichai to employees was reported earlier by Axios and others, and its authenticity was confirmed by Google at CNN on Sunday.
This is the latest in a series of events that seem to have opposed Google and other technology companies in the White House.
In a tweet on August 28, Trump accused "Google and others" of "suppressing conservative voices and hiding news and news that are good".
He accused Google of rigging the results to show "bad" stories when users search for "Trump news", although he offered no evidence to support his claim.
The controversy resumed last week with the leak of a one-hour video of executives and Google staff expressing their anger after Trump's victory in the 2016 US presidential election.
The company responded in a statement, saying the Googlers are free to voice their opinions at company meetings.
"Nothing has been said at this meeting, or any other meeting, to suggest that any political bias influences the way we build or operate our products," the company said.
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This is Pichai's complete letter to the staff:
Hi googlers,
Recently, there has been some news about how we approach our work – in particular, how we present our research results. We feel privileged to create a product that offers instant access to information for everyone, anywhere in the world, whether you are an MIT PhD student or a student on the other side of the world using a computer for the first time . We have billions of people relying on us for accurate information and we have a deep sense of responsibility for delivering the highest quality results.
It is important to me that our internal culture continues to strengthen our mission of organizing global information and making it universally accessible and useful. Recent articles refer to an internal email to suggest that we are compromising the integrity of our search results for a political purpose. This is absolutely wrong. We do not sell our products to promote a political agenda. The trust of our users in us is our greatest asset and we must always protect it. If a Googler undermines that trust, we will hold them accountable.
As we move forward in our mission, we must remain rooted in our values, the first of which is to respect the user. Not just a user … everyone. We build products for people of all walks of life and beliefs, and we have strong policies to ensure our products remain free of bias. As we enter the election season in the United States, this commitment needs to be reaffirmed. Although we remain faithful to our long-standing principles, Google itself is and must continue to be non-partisan.
Our second value is to respect opportunities. Working at Google involves a huge responsibility, not only to do the right thing, but to accomplish important tasks. The decisions you make have the potential to affect many people and each decision (large or small) defines what Google is. We have a long-term incentive to make the right decisions to make our products work for everyone.
Our third value is to respect each other. We are a global company with more than 80,000 employees in nearly 60 countries and a wide range of political opinions. But we all have something very important in common: we've joined Google to create products that make life better for everyone. Google is not a place where we can solve all our individual differences. It is a place where we meet despite our differences to continue our mission.
We must ensure that our culture continues to reinforce this goal. I look forward to working with you all for this purpose.
– Sundar Pichai
– Laurie Segall and Jordan Valinsky contributed to this report.
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