Google faces a major antitrust lawsuit from the Department of Justice that could potentially deflate the 25-year-old, censorship-obsessed Big Tech giant.
The DOJ is suing Google, claiming that the company became the $1.7 trillion behemoth it is today by illegal means. “The case centers on whether Google illegally cemented its dominance and squashed competition by paying Apple and other companies to make its internet search engine the default on the iPhone as well as on other devices and platforms,” The New York Times reported.
The DOJ's concerns rest on the fact that Google owns 90 percent of the search market, controls much of the ad market and has found a way to become involved in people’s lives nearly every single day through things like Gmail, Chrome, Google Maps, Google Docs and other Google services and devices.
Under former President Donald Trump, former Attorney General William Barr filed the initial lawsuit in 2020 and 11 states additionally joined the suit. “The government has said in its complaint that it wants Google to change its monopolistic business practices, potentially pay damages and restructure itself,” according to The Times’s summary of the lawsuit.
MRC Free Speech America Vice President Dan Schneider pointed out the company’s apparent abuse of power. “Google is the worst of the Big Tech thugs,” he said. “We have a list a mile long of examples of its censorship practices. It routinely buries conservative voices, news outlets and Republican campaign websites. It is also one of the biggest stealth supporters of every leftwing goal you can imagine.” He added that “there is no doubt that DOJ will reveal scads of illegal actions by the left's favorite search engine.”
Google has made one thing abundantly clear: it’s obsessed with distorting the views of its users and suppressing views that run counter to the left’s narrative. Examples of Google manipulating search results, impressing its leftist values upon users and giving some players an unfair advantage are numerous. MRC Free Speech America compiled a few examples below from this year alone:
- Google buried search results for “presidential campaign websites,” the day before the GOP primary debates. MRC Free Speech America researchers searched Google for “presidential campaign websites,” but the search engine did not display a single Republican candidate on its first page of results the day before the first Republican Party presidential primary debate on August 23. President Joe Biden’s campaign website, of course, showed up as the second search result along with a Democratic Party challenger Marianne Williamson’s campaign website, which came up as the fifth result. Google also displayed websites of past failed Democrat presidential candidates, such as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. Notably, 2024 Democrat presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., also did not appear in Google’s search results even though he presents the biggest threat to President Joe Biden's nomination.
- Google’s Bard failed to acknowledge that abortion ends the life of a baby. MRC Free Speech America found that Google’s AI chatbot Bard displayed pro-abortion bias when asked whether the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade or Dobbs v. Jackson correctly. The chatbot responded that “both sides” in Dobbs had “strong arguments” while calling Dobbs “highly controversial.” In its summary of the pro-life argument made in the majority opinion for Dobs v. Jackson, Google’s chatbot notably omitted the strongest of all: That an abortion ends the life of a defenseless human being.
- Google was exposed for highlighting more leftist news on its Google News page. AllSides — a media solutions company that purports to “expose people to information and ideas from all sides of the political spectrum so they can better understand the world” — released a report on Feb. 28 illustrating Google News bias. The report showed that Google News “displayed articles from left-wing media sources far more often than sources from the right.” Specifically, AllSides noted that according to its analysis, “61% of media outlets presented on Google News’ homepage over a 5-day period were from sources AllSides rates as on the left, with just 3% from outlets on the right.”
- Google censored MRC Free Speech America’s website for three weeks. MRC Free Speech America analyzed Google search results for “mrc free speech america” and found scathing evidence of Google’s censorship against the organization. “It looks like there aren’t many great results for this search,” Google warned at the top of the first page of search results. “The results below match your search terms, but some of them may not have reliable information on this topic.” The warning appears to be an attempt to dissuade users from visiting the organization's site and thwart its reach, page engagement and interactions after MRC Free Speech America exposed Google for bias and censorship multiple times.
These examples barely touch on Google’s clear bias and censorship over the past several years. MRC Free Speech America researchers found that the company buried Senate Republican candidates’ campaign websites in 83 percent of top Senate races prior to the 2022 midterm elections. Google was similarly accused of marking more emails from right-leaning candidates as spam compared to left-leaning candidates last year. And as if that wasn’t enough, in October 2021, former President Trump was the only U.S. president whose Google “About” section gave no indication of his presidential office.
MRC Free Speech America Associate Editor Joseph Vazquez, Assistant Editor Luis Cornelio and Contractor Catherine Salgado contributed to this report.
Conservatives are under attack. Contact Google at 650-253-0000 and demand it be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on so-called hate speech and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.
