Update, 1 p.m. PT: Trump threatened Google, Facebook, and Twitter in comments to reporters Tuesday afternoon.
TRUMP: "I think Google is taking advantage of a lot of people. I think that is a very serious thing. It's a very serious charge. … Look at what's going on with Twitter, if you look at what's going on with Facebook, they better be careful because you can't do that to people."
— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) August 28, 2018
Original story: President Donald Trump woke up Tuesday morning unhappy with which news stories about him were rising to the top of his Google search results. So he fired off some tweets about what he maintained is a suppression of conservative media voices. Soon enough, stories about Trump’s attack on the tech giant rose to the top of Google search results.
Trump’s accusations, in which he once again takes aim at a huge tech company (breathe easy for a day, Amazon), were serious enough that he promised an investigation into the “RIGGED” results for searches of “Trump News,” which returned mostly stories from the “Fake News Media.”
Google search results for “Trump News” shows only the viewing/reporting of Fake News Media. In other words, they have it RIGGED, for me & others, so that almost all stories & news is BAD. Fake CNN is prominent. Republican/Conservative & Fair Media is shut out. Illegal? 96% of….
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 28, 2018
….results on “Trump News” are from National Left-Wing Media, very dangerous. Google & others are suppressing voices of Conservatives and hiding information and news that is good. They are controlling what we can & cannot see. This is a very serious situation-will be addressed!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 28, 2018
The Trump administration is also “taking a look” at whether Google should be regulated by the government, according to economic advisor Larry Kudlow who said just that outside the White House, according to the Washington Post and others.
The Trump administration is “taking a look” at imposing regulations on Google following the president’s tweet Tuesday morning accusing the search giant of favoring news outlets critical of him https://t.co/kilSv4Vzel pic.twitter.com/nhSxpzF00x
— POLITICO (@politico) August 28, 2018
In fact, the dreaded Amazon-owned Post, another frequent target of the president’s Twitter ire, was among the results in a Google search for “Trump news” by 9:30 a.m. PT on Tuesday. It’s tough not to picture Trump shaking his fist at the computer where he’s doing all this searching.
Google defended its algorithm and what’s returned for users when they type in a specific query. In a statement, the company said political sentiment is not in play.
Breaking: Google statement in response to Trump tweet pic.twitter.com/QqMuxQ7gkj
— Hadas Gold (@Hadas_Gold) August 28, 2018
The Post noted that Trump’s early tweets came the morning after Fox Business host Lou Dobbs interviewed Lynnette Hardaway and Rochelle Richardson, the pro-Trump duo know as Diamond and Silk, who have previously claimed that their videos are being suppressed by tech companies.
The biggest news out of all of this — at least according to the funny people on Twitter — might be that the president uses both a computer and Google.
It was suggested repeatedly (for the good of another tech giant — Microsoft) that if the president is so unhappy with Google, he should try an alternative search engine: