Missouri Attorney General and U.S. Senate candidate Josh Hawley on Friday called for continued scrutiny into Google’s search algorithm and use of private data.
Hawley made the comments on "Fox & Friends," reacting to a Wall Street Journal story showing that Google employees sought to modify Google’s search results to resist President Donald Trump’s executive order again "foreign terrorist entry," commonly known as the "travel ban."
Emails exchanged by Google employees fretted that searches were producing "algorithmically biased results" supporting the travel ban. Hawley told "Fox & Friends" that his office was investigating whether Google was operating with an agenda.
"What kind of result is it returning on these searches? And are they biased against conservatives?" he asked.
A Google spokeswoman told the Journal, "These emails were just a brainstorm of ideas, none of which were ever implemented. Google has never manipulated its search results or modified any of its products to promote a particular political ideology."
In the leaked emails, Google employees discussed ways to "leverage" Google’s search tools to steer traffic away from anti-immigrant results. Though the Journal did not conclude that the changes were ever made, Google did take an institutional stance against the ban, joining Apple and others in filing an amicus brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
Hawley praised Google for being forthcoming thus far but said more information was needed to "see exactly how they are using that search algorithm." In addition to concerns about political bias, he worried about Google’s anti-competitive practices.
"So we want to know, are they using it in a biased fashion and also are they using it against competitors?" Sen. Orrin Hatch (R., Utah) called in August for an investigation into Google’s anti-competitive practices in search and digital advertising, sending a letter to the Federal Trade Commission’s chairman about the same.
Google makes as many as 2,000 changes to its algorithm each year, according to Richard Gingras, Google’s vice president of news.
Google employees exhibit a strong preference for Democratic candidates. According to a GovPredict study, Google employees have given nearly ten times more to Democrats than to Republicans since 2004.
By all indications, the leadership of Google and of Alphabet Inc., Google’s parent company, are similar. A memo between high-level officials in Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign discussed "work being done by [then-Alphabet chairman] Eric Schmidt’s group and others working directly and indirectly with your team."
After Schmidt’s efforts failed and Trump won in November 2016, Google’s top executives addressed hundreds of worried employees. The meeting included open admissions of preference for Clinton, jokes about "moving to Canada," and instructions to hug one another.
Following Google’s decision not to send a top executive to testify to the Senate Intelligence Committee alongside Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg earlier this month, committee staff left a seat empty behind a placard labeled "GOOGLE."
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) warned Google in a tweet earlier this month that an "invite will be on its way" to answer questions about its efforts to "stop Trump."
•Claims to be fair, but gave a 'silent donation" to a left-wing group to stop Trump
•Works w/ China/Russia to censor the internet, but cancelled a contract with our military
•Ignores Senate hearingIt’s time for @Google to answer some ?’s An invite will be on its way.
— Kevin McCarthy (@GOPLeader) September 11, 2018
Hawley shared that many Missourians had expressed concern, and he would follow the investigation wherever it led. "I haven’t prejudged anything. I'm a prosecutor. I want to get the facts. and that's exactly what we are going to do."
Josh Hawley is running against Sen. Claire McCaskill (D., Mo.), with polls showing them within one percentage point of each other.
President Trump will join Hawley for a rally in Missouri Friday night.