Google chief executive officer (CEO) Sundar Pichai in a mail has asked his employees that the company should be a “trusted source of information to people of every background and belief”, no matter who wins the US presidential elections, the Washington Post reported.
Pichai’s remarks are being seen as an effort by Big Tech companies to keep themselves from being embroiled in political divisions in the election year.
US Elections 2024 LIVE updates
In September this year, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump had said he would prosecute the search engine giant if he wins the election. The former US president alleged that Google only shows “bad stories about him”.
ALSO READ: US Election Results: How swing states voted in the past and what polls show
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 Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris,” Trump in a post on his social network Truth Social.
ALSO READ: Trump vs Harris: Key races signalling early who will win the high-stakes presidential contest
“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,” Reuters quoted Trump as saying.
In 2019, Trump alleged in a series of posts on X that Google favored negative news stories about him in the 2016 presidential election, according to the Washington Post. Google dismissed the claims at the time.
Election Day voting is underway across the eastern and central United States on Tuesday morning after tens of millions of Americans had already cast their ballots in early voting to decide whether Republican Donald Trump will get a second stint at the White House or Democrat Kamala Harris will script history.
Those early votes included record numbers in Georgia, North Carolina and other battleground states that could decide the winner.
