Google is facing investigation by the Missouri Attorney General’s office for allegedly “manipulating search results” and displaying anti-conservative bias ahead of the 2024 election.
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey said he would issue a subpoena “to get to the bottom of election interference by Google,” a spokesman for the Republican told The Post on Friday.
Bailey will seek information about the black-box algorithm that powers Google searches — which came under criticism from Donald Trump before the election for delivering mostly negative articles about the Republican presidential nominee.
“Evidence has emerged that Google is de-emphasizing conservative speech or content by manipulating search results — such as putting conservative reporting on page 11 instead of page 1,” the spokesperson said.
“Google is the largest search engine in the US and has an obligation to consumers to use fair business practices,” the spokesperson said. “We will subpoena information on Google’s algorithms and other systems to determine whether they are censoring conservative speech.”
Bailey accused Google of “waging war on the democratic process” in an X post announcing the investigation on Thursday.
“I am launching an investigation into Google, America’s largest search engine, for censoring conservative speech during the most consequential election in our nation’s history,” Bailey wrote.
A Google spokesperson said the Missouri Attorney General’s “claims are completely false.”
“Independent studies have confirmed that Google Search is non-biased,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “Search serves all of our users, and our business is based on showing useful information to everyone – no matter their political beliefs.”
Trump and other Republicans have charged for years that Google suppresses conservative voices. The investigation intensified after Google’s search engine’s “autofill” feature caused it to skip results related to Trump’s assassination attempt at a July 13 Pennsylvania rally.
In August, the Republican-led House Oversight Committee demanded information from Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Regarding whether their platform had suppressed information about the incident.
The panel also sought information about the inner workings of Google’s search algorithms.
Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), Chairman of the Oversight Committee, asked Pichai to provide details about how the search tool’s autocomplete feature covers newsworthy events and whether it “tries to avoid query results. Those that Google wants to limit or ban because it considers them “harmful or dangerous.”
Google denied wrongdoing and said information about the Trump assassination attempt was not initially revealed because “built-in protections related to political violence” were outdated.
In a September 27 post on Truth Social, Trump directly accused Google of bias — and hinted that he would try to sue the company if he takes office.
A day after the Media Research Center, a conservative watchdog organization, Trump posted, published an analysis emphasizing that search result Harris’s campaign website was placed in a more prominent position than Trump’s official site.
The group also claimed that Google placed articles with a “leftist bias” at the top of search results for Trump.
Trump wrote, “It has been determined that Google unlawfully used a system of highlighting and displaying only bad stories about Donald J. Trump, some created for this purpose, while Also, just revealing good stories about Comrade Kamala Harris.” In those days.
“This is an illegal activity and hopefully the Department of Justice will criminally prosecute him for this blatant election interference,” Trump said. “If not, and subject to the laws of our country, I will request that he be prosecuted at the maximum level if he wins the election, and becomes President of the United States.”
