Google has history of biasing search results to give results that favor liberals, which arguably amount to unreported in-kind campaign contributions. According to the FEC:
Goods or services offered free or at less than the usual charge result in an in-kind contribution.
Here is one description of the bias from Google:
In the run-up to the US presidential election in 2016, Professor Robert Epstein, of the American Institute for Behavioural Research and Technology, did a simple search for political news on Google and Yahoo. He was stunned to find Google gave him twice as many pro-Hillary Clinton articles as Yahoo did. . . a US-based internet research group, found that if you google politically loaded terms, the top results are 40 per cent more likely to “contain pages with a Left or far-Left slant”..
Some may say that results favorable to conservatives still appear on Google; they just appear on well down on the list after a bunch of stories favorable to liberals and require a bit more effort to find. That may be true, but Google advertisers pay about $30 billion a year to get their information moved to the top of the first page.
If just 3% of the searches are politically related, the value of Google’s in-kind contributions could amount to $1 billion per year or even more. That is roughly equivalent to the spending by Clinton and her PAC in 2016.
I have seen no evidence that Google has reported any of these in-kind contributions as required by federal and state election laws. I guess investigators have been too busy tracking down $100000 in alleged spending by Russians on Facebook to bother with this minor issue . . .
Google claims exemption from libel laws since it is simply an “internet provider” not a publisher.
If FedEx provided free expediated delivery of campaign materials or the Yellow pages offered free advertising, it would be an in-kind contribution. What is different with Google?
Right, Google is applying the techniques that use to censor conservative voices to their censored search engine in Communist China. Now that is high tech!
It’s impossible for a conservative to create a search engine that could rival Google, therefore we need government intervention into the marketplace.
My wife puts people on the first page of Google, professionally. That’s her job. You know how? Tons and tons and tons of legwork, algorithms, custom software and TIME and EFFORT and KNOWLEDGE. Money has nothing to do with it.
