Search on Google has no political bias, says the CEO in an internal memo

Image: Jeff Chiu / AP / REX / Shutterstock

Google leader Sundar Pichai wants people working for him to understand this clearly: Google's search results are not influenced by political biases.

This is the message that Pichai put forward to send an email Friday to all employees. He was responding to reports on a January 2017 email chain that began a few days after Donald Trump instituted his first version of the Muslim ban.

A report from Thursday of the the Wall Street newspaper noted that in early 2017, employees spoke about the use of Google's search features to meet Trump's controversial travel ban, focused primarily on Muslim countries. They looked for a way to push back the "Islamophobic and biased results of search terms algorithms" Islam "," Muslim "," Iran ", etc." and "detrimental, algorithm biased search results, search terms" Mexico "," Hispanic "," Latino ", etc."

While the WSJ report notes that the chain included "warning notes" that warned using the platform for political purposes, Google has always issued a statement shortly after the publication of the article. The spokesman described the chain as "brainstorming ideas, none of which has been implemented".

The statement continues: "Google has never manipulated its search results or modified its products to promote a particular political ideology, not during the current election campaign, not in the 2016 elections and not after President Trump's decree. on immigration Our processes and policies would have allowed no manipulation of research results to promote political ideologies. "

Pichai's note seems to have a similar tone. A New York Times The report reveals that it has removed any notion of Google engaging in political activities.

"Recent articles refer to an internal email to suggest that we could compromise the integrity of our search results for a political purpose – it's absolutely wrong," wrote Pichai. "We do not prioritize our products to promote a political agenda, the trust of our users in us is our greatest asset and we must always protect it."