As US Presidential Election 2024 draws nearer, the battle is heating up. So is the chatter on social media platforms about Republican Party nominee and former US president Donald Trump and presumptive Democratic Party nominee Kamala Harris, the sitting Vice President.
While allegations and counter-allegations are a common thing in the electoral fray, a unique claim has emerged from Trump supporters.
They say that Google is working against Trump.
Among the flagbearers of this brigade appears to be billionaire Elon Musk, who came out in support of Trump all guns blazing after the horrific assassination attempt.
Musk has made and also reposted several posts on social media platform X (which he owns), raising the question if Google was working against Trump by suppressing search terms by way of auto-complete.
To drive home his point, Musk posted what appeared to be a screengrab of a Google search. The search box carries the words 'president donald' while the auto-complete suggestions in the drop-down list has words like 'president donald duck' and 'president Donald regan'.
In his post, Musk claimed that Google has a 'search ban' on Trump and raised a question whether it was interfering in elections.
Musk appeared to support a claim made by many Trump supporters that a simple search on Trump, while leading to relevant web pages after hitting 'enter', is throwing up auto-complete suggestions which do not prompt the user in right direction.
Musk also reposted a post on X which appeared to claim that a search for 'Donald Trump' led the user to result page with title 'News about Harris, Donald Trump' and had results which the user said favoured Harris over Trump.
In his other reposts, Musk seemed to support claims that search for Donald Trump was throwing up results about Kamala Harris.
There was also clamour from Trump supporters that Google was not readily yielding information about assassination bid Trump survived recently.
In one of his posts, Musk has posted an infographic which appears to show that at the time of 2020 elections, Google-parent Alphabet donated USD 1710272. The image showed that Alphabet was not among the top-20 donors to Trump campaign.
The numbers in the infographic are purportedly based on data with US Federal Election Commission.
Is it really happening? Is Google suppressing information about Trump assassination?
FPJ has not accessed Google results obtained in the US first-hand. However, a Google search from its Mumbai office for the search-term 'Donald Trump' did show 'Donald Trump assassination' as one of the suggestions in the auto-complete drop down list.
Pichai is backing Kamala Harris, claim Trump supporters
Another bizarre claim that's emerging from the MAGA clan is Google CEO Sundar Pichai is supporting Kamala Harris as like him, even she has family ties with India.
The India connection is being discussed quite a bit this time in US election season. It came to bite JD Vance, Trump's running mate.
JD Vance's wife Usha Chilukuri Vance is of Indian origin and as inappropriate as it sounds, some Trump supporters disapproved of his choices in his personal life.
(With inputs from agencies)
