Google staff 'discussed tweaking search results to counter travel ban'

Google employees discussed ways to tweak search results so that they would counter the Trump administration's controversial 2017 travel ban, according to internal emails seen by the Wall Street Journal.

Senior employees discussed ways that Google's search engine could show users how to contribute to pro-immigration organisations and contact lawmakers and government agencies.

The ideas were never implemented, Google claims.

However, the news is likely to fuel criticism among Republicans and other conservative groups that tech companies such as Google stifle right-wing voices. 

President Trump has previously signalled he is considering regulating Google more tightly after he claimed the search engine’s news section was “rigged” against right-wing media voices. 

"I think Google is really taking advantage of our people," Mr Trump said last month. "Google, and Twitter and Facebook, they are really treading on very, very troubled territory, and they have to be careful. It's not fair to large portions of the population."

President Trump's travel ban, which generated public outcry, temporarily barred visitors and immigrants from seven majority Muslim countries. 

Trump claimed the travel ban was needed to protect the US against Islamist militants, and the Supreme Court upheld the measure in June.

The latest emails reveal Google employees proposed ways to "leverage" search functions to counter "islamophobic, algorithmically biased results from search terms 'Islam', 'Muslim', 'Iran', etc" as well as "biased search results from search terms such as 'Mexico', 'Hispanic', 'Latino'".

The emails show an internal debate inside the company over the proposed intervention. One employee wrote "we’re absolutely in…Anything you need."

However, others expressed concern over the plans, arguing that Google should also alter search results to highlight conservative views that supported the ban, as well as comments opposing it.

A Google spokesperson said the emails represented brainstorming and none of the ideas was implemented. She said the company did not manipulate search results or modify products to promote political views.

"Our processes and policies would not have allowed for any manipulation of search results to promote political ideologies," the spokeswoman said in a statement.

Google publicly opposed Mr Trump's travel ban, and was one of nearly 100 technology businesses which filed an amicus brief opposing the policy.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin was also photographed attending a protest against the ban.

The leaked emails come after US president tweeted last month that 96pc of articles which appear after searching "Trump news" on Google come from liberal media outlets, while conservative sites were “shut out”. 

Google dismissed the claims in a statement, saying there was no “political agenda” in its search and that “we don’t bias our results toward any political ideology”. 

Mr Trump's public criticism of Google has fuelled the idea that the company is biased against Mr Trump's administration and conservative viewpoints.

A video recording of a Google employee meeting which took place shortly after the 2016 US Presidential Election was provided to conservative news website Breitbart earlier this month. In the video, Mr Brin said that "most people here are pretty upset and pretty sad", following the election result.

James Damore, a Google employee who was fired in 2017 for writing an internal document which claimed that biological causes were behind diversity issues in the technology industry, is suing the company. Mr Damore claims that he was fired because of his conservative views, an allegation which Google has denied.

Another former Google employee, David Gudeman, joined Mr Damore in filing the lawsuit as a proposed class action in Santa Clara County Superior Court in California.

“Damore, Gudeman, and other class members were ostracized, belittled, and punished for their heterodox political views, and for the added sin of their birth circumstances of being Caucasians and/or males,” the lawsuit said.