’Illegal activity’: US Presidential candidate Donald Trump slams Google search for showing ‘bad stories’ about him

Donald Trump, the Republican candidate in 2024 US polls, on Friday accused the tech giant Google of displaying only "bad stories" about him. The former US President threatened legal action against the search engine if elected.

With no substantive justification backing these accusations, Donald Trump took to Truth Social platform to levy these charges. He further alleged that the search engine showing only positive articles about his Democratic rival Vice President Kamala Harris.

The post reads, "It has been determined that Google has illegally used a system of only revealing and displaying bad stories about Donald J. Trump, some made up for this purpose while, at the same time, only revealing good stories about Comrade Kamala Harris.

He added, “This is an ILLEGAL ACTIVITY, and hopefully the Justice Department will criminally prosecute them for this blatant Interference of Elections. If not, and subject to the Laws of our Country, I will request their prosecution, at the maximum levels, when I win the Election, and become President of the United States!”

This development comes in the wake of a conservative group report about Google search on “Donald Trump presidential race 2024.” Responding to these claims, the tech giant informed news agency AFP that both campaign websites consistently appear at the top of Search for relevant and common search queries.

Elaborating on the matter and refuting the allegations, Google said, "This report looked at a single rare search term on a single day a few weeks ago, and even for that search, both candidates' websites ranked in the top results on Google," reported AFP.

Perhaps, the search engine has been adamant that it does not create biased search results to favour any political candidate. It is important to note that timeliness and popularity of topics are the factors that influence search results for news stories.

(With AFP inputs)