Without using the name of the Republican presidential front-runner, Google CEO Sundar Pichai has rebuked Donald Trump over his recent call to temporarily ban all Muslim immigration to the United States.
In an essay posted on the website
Medium, Pichai cites his own success story as an immigrant from India to argue that "[t]he open-mindedness, tolerance, and acceptance of new Americans is one of the country's greatest strengths and most defining characteristics. And that is no coincidence – America, after all, was and is a country of immigrants.
"That is why it's so disheartening to see the intolerant discourse playing out in the news these days – statements that our country would be a better place without the voices, ideas and the contributions of certain groups of people, based solely on where they come from, or their religion."
Acknowledging the roiling controversy over Muslim immigrants and the threat of domestic terrorism, Pichai wrote, "I debated whether to post this, because lately it seems that criticism of intolerance just gives more oxygen to this debate."
"But I feel we must speak out – particularly those of us who are not under attack. Everyone has the right to their views, but it's also important that those who are less represented know that those are not the views of all."
Lest there be any further doubt as to the identity of the group of potential immigrants he was defending, Pichai added, "Let's not let fear defeat our values. We must support Muslim and other minority communities in the US and around the world."
The essay is bound to further fuel conservative mistrust of Google, which has been accused of having a liberal political bias for years.
In March, a Google research team proposed using "facts" instead of website popularity to compile Google rankings.
At the time, a
Fox News article cited immigration as a chief reason to fear the injection of political bias into the ranking system.
"[C]ritics worry that this is a first step towards Google playing God and effectively censoring content it does not like. They fear that skeptics of things like climate change or more immigration (both subjects that Google founders have expressed strong feelings about) might find their websites buried if this ranking system were adopted," Maxim Lott wrote.
Also in March, the Wall Street Journal reported that
Google executives and lobbyists have met with top Obama administration officials as many as 230 times since President Barack Obama took office in 2009 — including visits as the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) investigated the Internet giant for antitrust violations.