For the second time this year, Google kicked PragerU’s app from its Play Store. But MRC Free Speech America Vice President Dan Schneider noted that the search giant’s quick reversal of this flagrant censorship reveals that Google has some deep concerns about its future.
PragerU reported in a Dec. 20 post on X that Google had booted its app for a supposed violation of a “Misleading Claims” policy: "Your app doesn't provide a clear source of government information or its description lacks an easy-to-see disclaimer stating that the app doesn't represent a government entity." Only a few hours after this censorship, Google restored the app. Schneider attributed Google’s abrupt about-face to the censorship giant’s fear of President-elect Donald Trump’s return to office and multiple existing Department of Justice (DOJ) cases against Google. Notably, Trump promised to investigate Google after the Media Research Center published a study documenting Google’s election interference.
“After years of exploiting its monopoly to silence and sideline conservatives, Google sees the writing on the wall and wants to escape the consequences of its rampant election interference as well as multiple DOJ suits into its monopolistic practices,” Schneider said. Schneider went on to point out that successive studies by the MRC researchers had shown that Google had repeatedly rigged search results to ensure that users saw predominantly leftist and legacy media coverage of the 2024 election while suppressing right-leaning media.
Schneider added, “Now that we’re only a month away from Trump’s inauguration, Google wants to escape accountability for years of censoring disfavored speech and putting its finger on the scale in our elections. It’s far too late for this kind of window dressing. President Trump has already declared that he will seek to prosecute Google for election interference. Google can run, but it can’t hide.”
And the recent move against PragerU was not an isolated incident. In June, Google removed the PragerU app, reportedly over “Hate Speech” in a documentary on radical Islam. Google later claimed that its decision to silence PragerU and the voices of the people interviewed for the documentary was an “‘error’” and reversed the decision.
At the same time, a DOJ case against Google has already devastated the search giant. In the U.S. v. Google 2020 case, Judge Amid P. Mehta found that Google had a monopoly in “general search services” and “general search text ads.” Judge Mehta condemned Google with the damning words, “Google is a monopolist and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly. It has violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act.” Google is currently pushing back on a DOJ request that the search giant be forced to sell its Chrome browser.
The DOJ launched a second case against Google at the beginning of 2023, which accused Google of violating the Sherman Act. This suit alleges that “Google has used anticompetitive, exclusionary, and unlawful means to eliminate or severely diminish any threat to its dominance over digital advertising technologies.” The search giant has also been hammered in court over its management of the Google Play Store. EPIC Games Inc., the company that created Fortnite, successfully sued Google after being banned from the Play Store.
PragerU is a member of the MRC Free Speech Alliance.
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