President Donald Trump is accusing Google and other US tech companies of rigging search results about him "so that almost all stories & news is BAD" and though he is offering no evidence, a top adviser says the White House is "taking a look" at whether Google should face federal regulation.
Google is pushing back sharply, saying Trump's claim simply wasn't true: "We never rank search results to manipulate political sentiment." The president's tweets Tuesday echoed his familiar attacks on the news media and a conservative talking point that California-based tech companies run by CEOs with liberal leanings don't give equal weight to opposing political viewpoints.
They also revealed anew his deep-seated frustration over not getting the credit he believes he deserves.
The president, who has said he runs on little sleep, jumped onto Twitter before dawn Tuesday to rehash his recent complaints about alleged suppression of conservative voices and positive news about him.
He followed that up with vague threats in Oval Office comments.
"I think Google has really taken advantage of a lot of people, and I think that's a very serious thing. That's a very serious charge," Trump said, adding that Google, Twitter, Facebook and others "better be careful, because you can't do that to people."
Trump claimed that "we have literally thousands and thousands of complaints coming in. ... So I think that Google and Twitter and Facebook, they're really treading on very, very troubled territory and they have to be careful."
Republican/Conservative & Fair Media is shut out. Illegal?" He added, again with no evidence, that "96% of results on "Trump News" are from National Left-Wing Media, very dangerous."
Steven Andres, who teaches about management information systems at San Diego State University, said people often assume that if you give a computer the same inputs, no matter where you are, that you "get the same outputs."
But it doesn't work that way, he said. "You're seeing different things every moment of the day and the algorithms are always trying to change the results."
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