Google and its founders have a long history of siding with the political left. Breitbart News has put together four of the most egregious links between Google and the Clinton campaign.
As Google comes under fire for its recent firing of engineer James Damore, who claimed that the company shows a blatant bias against anyone who doesn’t follow Google groupthink, Breitbart News has compiled a list of times Google was shown to take a blatantly leftist stance including their ties to the 2016 presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton.
1: Eric Schmidt wanted to be ‘Head Outside Advisor’ to Clinton campaign
Alphabet Inc. CEO Eric Schmidt was revealed to have expressed his desire to act work with the Clinton presidential campaign in documents published by the whistleblowing organization WikiLeaks. The emails between Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta and campaign manager Robby Mook show that Schmidt met with Podesta and was interested in assuming the role of “head outside advisor.”
“I met with Eric Schmidt tonight,” wrote Podesta. “As David reported, he’s ready to fund, advise recruit talent, etc. He was more deferential on structure than I expected. Wasn’t pushing to run through one of his existing firms. Clearly wants to be head outside advisor, but didn’t seem like he wanted to push others out.” Podesta further pushes Mook to meet with Schmidt, writing, “He’s still in DC tomorrow and would like to meet with you if you are in DC in the afternoon. I think it’s worth doing. You around? If you are, and want to meet with him, maybe the four of us can get on the phone in the am.”
2: Eric Schmidt Created ‘The Groundwork’ To Help Clinton’s Online Campaign
Schmidt was instrumental in the formation of “The Groundwork”, an online startup company that aimed to place Hillary Clinton in the white house. The Groundwork was the highest paid tech service company to the Clinton campaign, receiving $136,131 during the third quarter and $313,349 through the first 9 months of 2015.
Michael Slaby, the CEO of The Groundwork, also served as the Chief Technology Officer for President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign, stated, “We’re not trying to obfuscate anything, we’re just trying to keep our heads down and do stuff.” Schmidt also worked closely on Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign with Obama lieutenant David Plouffe, who stated that Schmidt, “helped recruit talent, choose technology and coach the campaign manager, Jim Messina, on the finer points of leading a large organization.”
3: Google Actively Suppressed Negative Search Results Relating To Clinton
A report from psychologist Robert Epstein revealed that Google manipulated search results related to Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election that had the potential to “shift as many as 3 million votes” according to Epstein. Epstein along with his colleagues at the American Institute for Behavioral Research (AIBRT) became interested in a video published by Matt Lieberman of Sourcefed which claimed that Google searches suppressed negative information about Hillary Clinton while other search engines such as Bing and Yahoo showed accurate results.
Epstein and AIBRT tested hundreds of different search terms related to the 2016 election, using Yahoo and Bing search as a control. Epsteins report stated,
It is somewhat difficult to get the Google search bar to suggest negative searches related to Mrs. Clinton or to make any Clinton-related suggestions when one types a negative search term. Bing and Yahoo, on the other hand, often show a number of negative suggestions in response to the same search terms. Bing and Yahoo seem to be showing us what people are actually searching for; Google is showing us something else — but what, and for what purpose?
As for Google Trends, as Lieberman reported, Google indeed withholds negative search terms for Mrs. Clinton even when such terms show high popularity in Trends. We have also found that Google often suggests positive search terms for Mrs. Clinton even when such terms are nearly invisible in Trends. The widely held belief, reinforced by Google’s own documentation, that Google’s search suggestions are based on “what other people are searching for” seems to be untrue in many instances.
Google tries to explain away such findings by saying its search bar is programmed to avoid suggesting searches that portray people in a negative light. As far as we can tell, this claim is false; Google suppresses negative suggestions selectively, not across the board. It is easy to get autocomplete to suggest negative searches related to prominent people, one of whom happens to be Mrs. Clinton’s opponent.
Epstein then hypothesized that Google directly altered search results in an attempt to influence the 2016 election,
Without whistleblowers or warrants, no one can prove Google executives are using digital shenanigans to influence elections, but I don’t see how we can rule out that possibility. There is nothing illegal about manipulating people using search suggestions and search rankings — quite the contrary, in fact — and it makes good financial sense for a company to use every legal means at its disposal to support its preferred candidates.
Epstein stated that despite being a Clinton supporter he didn’t think it would be, “right for her to win the presidency because of the invisible, large-scale manipulations of a private company. That would make democracy meaningless.”
4: Julian Assange Claimed That Google Was ‘Directly Engaged’ In The Clinton Campaign
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange spoke via video link to the “New Era of Journalism: Farewell to Mainstream” forum in Moscow when he made the claim that tech giant Google was complicit in the running of Hillary Clinton’s digital campaign. Assange pointed out that many high up Google employee names appear within Clinton’s leaked email transcripts, a searchable list of which WikiLeaks has compiled. Jared Cohen, the founder of ‘Google Ideas’ – now rebranded as ‘Jigsaw,’ appears frequently on the list. Cohen’s team at Google was revealed to be working with Clinton alongside Al Jazeera in attempts to influence regime change in Syria following the publishing of Clinton’s emails by Wikileaks.
“We should understand that Google… is intensely aligned with U.S. exceptionalism… personally at the top aligned with Hillary Clinton’s election campaign and almost certainly once Hillary Clinton becomes president, those people in Google, like Jared Cohen, will be placed into positions around the new Clinton presidency” said Assange, heavily implying that Google and it’s employees could directly benefit from a Clinton presidency. Assange further emphasized Google’s control over their users data, “Google controls 80 percent of the smartphone market through its control of Android and if you control the device itself – that people use to read – then anything that they connect to through that device you have control over as well.”
“Google has gotten into bed with the Obama administration in a very significant way,” stated Assange. “It is the company that visits the White House more than any other – averaged once per week in the last four years.”
All of these are examples of Google’s dedication to the establishment left and their attempts to influence politics directly to benefit the Clintons. The recent revelations about Google’s dedication to leftist ideology within their workplace environment should come as a surprise to no one, but whether the company will learn from the backlash against them following the firing of James Damore is yet to be seen.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News, covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or email him at lnolan@breitbart.com.