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Google Denies Political Bias After Breitbart Leaks Video And Email Reactions To Trump Election

By Reggie Ijeoma
Published on: 20:34 PST, Sep 12, 2018

In recent weeks, conservatives have been ramping up their criticism of tech companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter for allegedly showing political bias against the Trump administration. This week, accusations heated up after Breitbart leaked a video and emails of Google executives reacting to the 2016 presidential election.

ABC News reports that Breitbart has published two leaks this week.

On Monday, Breitbart and Fox News reported on a leaked email from Eliana Murillo, Google’s multicultural marketing chief. The email was sent out shortly after the 2016 presidential election, and referenced Google’s efforts to boost Latino turnout. Google partnered with Voto Latino to pay for rides to the polls, and Murillo said in her email that “We pushed tp [sic] get out the Latino vote with our features, our partners, and our voices. We kept our Google efforts non-partisan and followed our company’s protocols for the elections strategy.”

Google has denied bias in a statement responding to the leaked email.

“The employee’s email is an expression of her personal political views about the outcome of the 2016 election and those views do not reflect any official stance by the company. We have nearly 90,000 employees comprising a broad array of political affiliations. The email itself explicitly notes that she is speaking personally, and that Google’s efforts were non-partisan.”

On Wednesday, Breitbart published a leaked video of an employee meeting shortly after the 2016 presidential election, in which Google executives appear upset by the Trump campaign victory. The executives include Google co-founder and Alphabet President Sergey Brin, and Google Senior Vice President of Global Affairs Kent Walker.

Google reiterated its response to the previous leak, by stating that there is no company political bias.

“At a regularly scheduled all hands meeting, some Google employees and executives expressed their own personal views in the aftermath of a long and divisive election season. Nothing was said at that meeting, or any other meeting, to suggest that any political bias ever influences the way we build or operate our products.”

Many analysts and media experts are pushing back against the conservative narrative, saying there is no evidence of bias on behalf of the companies or their methodologies. Gizmodo reports that nowhere in the one-hour long Google video does anyone suggest that Google modifies their search results to suppress conservatives.

Over the past month, President Trump himself has made accusations of bias, tweeting unfounded accusations against Google and Twitter.

Business Insider reports that Trump’s 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale has also made similar statements, saying that Google is a ‘threat to the republic’ after the publication of the leaked video.

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