Former President Donald Trump suggested Congress could shut down Google for alleged bias and censorship.
The Big Tech giant has been criticized for how its search engine performed with inquiries related to the July 13 assassination attempt on Trump. Google's search bar and artificial intelligence tool would not produce results connected to the shooting.
"Google has been very bad. They've been very irresponsible. And I have a feeling that Google is going to be close to shut down because I don't think Congress is going to take it. I really don't think so,” Trump told Fox Business' Maria Bartiromo in a interview broadcast Friday.
"Google has to be careful."
Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., on Wednesday sent a letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai demanding answers for his company's suppression of search terms related to the assassination attempt.
"Google advertises itself as a search engine and aggregator, not a censor," Marshall wrote in his letter. "If Google wishes to become to a publishing firm or editor, Congress could then regulate accordingly by removing the sacred Section 230 protections your firm has long used to silence conservative voices."
Marshall also wrote that Google should testify before Congress about what led to the alleged censorship.
Google's "autocomplete" issue on the Trump assassination attempt seemed to be resolved early Wednesday. Google has denied that censorship occurred.
"Autocomplete wasn't providing predictions for queries about the assassination attempt against former President Trump. That's because it has built-in protections related to political violence — and those systems were out of date," Google Communications wrote on X. "After the horrific events in Butler, PA, those predicted queries should have appeared but didn't. Once the issue was flagged, we started working on improvements, and they're already rolling out."
Donald Trump Jr. on Sunday accused Google of "intentional election interference" because its "Autocomplete" tool doesn't include the attempted assassination of his father in its results.
"Big Tech is trying to interfere in the election AGAIN to help Kamala Harris. We all know this is intentional election interference from Google. Truly despicable," the younger Trump wrote atop an X post he shared purportedly showing the results of a Google search containing the phrase "assassination attempt on."