White House to probe Google after Trump accuses it of bias

WASHINGTON: The White House indicated it will investigate Google after President Donald Trump accused the tech giant, as well as Facebook and Twitter, of promoting negative news coverage of his administration.

Trump’s economic adviser Larry Kudlow told reporters on Tuesday that the White House was “taking a look” at Google, saying the administration would do “some investigation and some analysis,” without providing further details.

His comments came hours after Trump accused Google’s search engine of promoting negative news articles and hiding “fair media” coverage of him.

Trump’s attack against the Alphabet Inc unit follows a string of grievances against technology companies, including social media Twitter Inc and Facebook Inc, which he has accused of silencing conservative voices, and Amazon.com Inc, which he has said is hurting small businesses and benefiting from a favourable deal with the US Postal Services.

Google denied any political bias, saying in a statement that its search engine is “not used to set a political agenda and we don’t bias our results towards any political ideology.”

Trump said in several tweets on Tuesday that Google search results for “Trump News” were “rigged” against him because they showed only coverage from outlets like CNN and not conservative publications, suggesting the practice was illegal. “Google is really taking advantage of our people,” Trump said . “Google, and Twitter and Facebook, they are really treading on very, very troubled territory.”