Donald Trump is accusing Google of slanting its search results to highlight bad news about him, which, yeah, par for the course.
Silly as it sounds, let’s assume for a sec that he’s right.
The question, then: so what?
Trump seems to be suggesting that he’ll lead some kind of review, the threat being, again, what?
If Google would want to cook its search results to make Trump look bad, that would be its prerogative.
And the president could do: precisely nothing about it.
That might sound harsh, but it’s not hard to see that Google could claim that its search results are speech in the context of the First Amendment, and that any governmental efforts to force it to alter its speech by altering its search results would be ginormously unconstitutional.
Would seem to be an open and shut case, that one.
A couple of courses here: one, that it’s hard to believe that Google is biasing its results against Trump, and two, that the Trump administration would actually try anything.
Now, no doubt, the president thinks he can make Google do whatever he wants them to do. Dude thinks he’s already our dictator, and that he’s still feeling around for precisely how much he can adjust the world to suit his maniac whims.
The ball is in Google’s court in terms of how it responds, or doesn’t respond.
Any kind of kowtowing PR hurts the company in the eyes of consumers. Anything less, and Google replaces kneeling NFL players as the focus of the Tweeter-in-Chief’s daily ire.
Fun times, these.
Column by Chris Graham
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