An attorney for Google’s parent company admitted that the autocomplete tool for its search function did not include the assassination attempt against former president Donald Trump. The admission came after the apparent search issues drew controversy online.
Alphabet Inc.’s counsel informed the House Judiciary Committee that bugs in Google’s autocomplete tool prevented it from predicting searches about the attempt on Trump’s life. The built-in protections that Google installed for searches related to political violence were “out of date,” the attorney said, and prevented the search autocomplete feature from generating results on the assassination attempt against Trump three weeks ago.
Google’s autocomplete feature experienced similar issues when users searched for “President Donald” and related search terms. The attorney said the bugs were fixed after they were brought to Google’s attention.
Google also claimed that an algorithmic error was responsible for broadcasting news stories about Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump’s 2024 rival, when users searched Trump’s name.
Ahead of a private briefing with staff of the Judiciary Committee, committee chairman Jim Jordan (R., Ohio) wrote a letter to Alphabet Inc. CEO Sundar Pichai Monday, submitting a list of questions about the search issues.
“Recent reporting has indicated that Google may now be interfering in the 2024 presidential election by censoring information about former President Donald Trump’s ongoing campaign for the presidency, including relating to the July 13 assassination attempt on him in Pennsylvania,” the letter reads.
“In response to the Committee and Select Subcommittee’s oversight, your counsel provided the Committee and Select Subcommittee with non-public information about Google’s issues with Search and Autocomplete and the company’s efforts to correct them, in addition to offering a private briefing to the Committee and Select Subcommittee this week.”
Jordan asked Pichai for more specific information about the bugs that caused “President Donald” searches to not show an autocomplete for Trump’s name. He also asked about the bugs that placed stories about Harris at the top of searches for Trump.
Trump himself and many conservatives strongly criticized the apparent issues with Google’s searches, to the point where Google felt compelled to issue a lengthy statement addressing accusations of political censorship.
“After the horrific events in Butler, PA, those predicted queries should have appeared but didn’t. Once the issue was flagged, we started working on improvements, and they’re already rolling out. You can see many relevant predictions now,” Google said on X last week.
The issue with the “President Donald” search autocomplete applied equally to other presidents such as former president Obama, Google said. The autocomplete malfunction for that kind of search appears to have been resolved.
The news-recommendation feature that generated Kamala Harris stories for users who were searching for Donald Trump is also not unique, Google said. Harris is the Democratic party’s presumptive presidential nominee, a position she gained only days after President Joe Biden stepped aside from the presidential contest.
“Overall, these types of prediction and labeling systems are algorithmic. While our systems work very well most of the time, you can find predictions that may be unexpected or imperfect, and bugs will occur,” Google concluded. National Review has reached out for further comment.
The Trump situation may not be top of mind for Google, given its massive defeat in an antitrust case brought by the Justice Department and states’ attorneys general.
Google is not the only major tech company to face scrutiny over how it is handling the assassination attempt on Trump. Meta faced strong blowback for suppressing the iconic images of Trump fist-pumping after suffering a bullet wound during the attempt on his life.
Trump told Fox News last week that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg called him to apologize over the apparent censorship and to assure him that Meta is fixing the error.
“He actually apologized. He said they made a mistake . . . and they’re correcting the mistake,” Trump said, while noting that Google did not call him about the search issues.
A meta spokeswoman previously clarified that Facebook’s fact-checking systems were erroneously applied to the images of Trump after doctored photos were circulating that resembled the real photos.