Trump also appears convinced that Google is purposely messing with its search autocomplete to block news about his assassination attempt. On July 30, an AP article fact-checked his claim that “attempted assassination of tr” did not bring up Trump’s name but did bring up Harry Truman, Gerald Ford, and “president donald duck.”
According to the AP, “Multiple high-profile figures, including Trump and sitting members of Congress, promoted the claim across social media platforms, collectively amassing more than 1 million likes and shares.” Google denied that any “manual action” was taken and said that the results were caused by protections against political violence.
On August 5, 2024, Trump asked his supporters to stop using Google.
The Trump + Biden Departments of Justice. As Trump’s presidential term came to an end, the Department of Justice filed a major antitrust suit against Google, claiming the company had a monopoly in search. The complaint opened this way:
Two decades ago, Google became the darling of Silicon Valley as a scrappy startup with an innovative way to search the emerging internet. That Google is long gone. The Google of today is a monopoly gatekeeper for the internet, and one of the wealthiest companies on the planet, with a market value of $1 trillion and annual revenue exceeding $160 billion. For many years, Google has used anticompetitive tactics to maintain and extend its monopolies in the markets for general search services, search advertising, and general search text advertising—the cornerstones of its empire.
At the time, Democratic skepticism of Big Tech was rising due to specific issues (the hellscape that social media had become, online disinformation after COVID-19, screen time concerns, etc.) but also to a broader feeling that pro-worker policies and old-fashioned trustbusting were just the thing after many years of corporate consolidation. So when the Biden administration took power, it maintained the case against Google and won it yesterday.
