INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Google is pushing back against a claim by Donald Trump that the search engine stopped promoting State of the Union livestreams on its
homepage after his presidency began
Trump claim came in the from of a tweeted video, which was still pinned to the top of his profile when this post was published at 9:30 PM
29, 2018, after Google refutation and multiple media reports of its inaccuracy.
Hashtagged #stopthebias, the video appears to show that
Google did not display links to livestreams of Trump first public speech to a joint session of Congress on February 28, 2017 or his first
State of the Union on January 30, 2018, despite promoting Obama State of the Union addresses in 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 and
2016.
#StopTheBias pic.twitter.com/xqz599iQZw
mdash; Donald J
Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 29, 2018
Google, however, says it did indeed highlight Trump first State of the Union in 2018, but that it
usually does not include links on its homepage to a president first public address to Congress, so neither Obama nor Trump were featured
In a statement sent to BuzzFeed News, the company said &On January 30, 2018, we highlighted the livestream of President Trump State of the
Union on the google.com homepage
We have historically not promoted the first address to Congress by a new President, which is technically not a State of the Union address
As a result, we didn''t include a promotion on google.com for this address in either 2009 or 2017.
Google statement to @JohnPaczkowski on
Trump tweet pic.twitter.com/1w82mQqApg
mdash; Jon Passantino (@passantino) August 29, 2018
The video shared by Trump does not make a
distinction between a president first public speech to a joint session of Congress and his first State of the Union address.
A discrepancy
in Google logo also suggests that at least one of the screenshots, which appear to have been taken from the Internet Archive Wayback
A Gizmodo commenter notes that one of the screenshots in the video Trump tweeted, from January 12, 2016, shows a version with the previous
Google logo, not the sans-serif version introduced in September 2015, which can be seen in a Wayback Archive screen capture from January 10,
2016 and other days from that month when a Google Doodle wasn''t featured.
Capture from the video tweeted from President Trump account
One
of Wayback Machine captures on January 10, 2016
Furthermore, while a link to Trump State of the Union does not appear on archived versions
of Google homepage from January 30, 2018, it does show up on a capture from 1AM on January 31, as Twitter user @WrockBro notes
That may be because the Wayback Machine uses Greenwich Mean Time time stamps.
Not only that, but also this: https://t.co/RfJIKpYGJX
mdash;
en
JPL (@WrockBro) August 30, 2018
The Wayback Machine capture linked by Twitter user @WrockBro
Trump tweet is the part of his current
onslaught against Google, other tech companies and mainstream media, which he accuses of having a liberal bias and burying news about his
It is worth pointing out, however, that Trump 2017 first speech to Congress was widely praised as &presidential& by journalists across the
political spectrum, even liberal publications
In turn, they wereridiculed by critics for being awed by a president acting presidential.
UPDATE:Mark Graham, director of the Wayback
Machine, sent TechCrunch a list of more links showing that Trump State of the Union address earlier this year was promoted on Google
All are shown in Greenwich Mean
Time.
https://web.archive.org/web/20180131022709/https://www.google.com/https://web.archive.org/web/20180131022757/https://www.google.com/ht
tps://web.archive.org/web/20180131023147/https://www.google.com/https://web.archive.org/web/20180131023314/https://www.google.com/https://we
b.archive.org/web/20180131023314/https://www.google.com/https://web.archive.org/web/20180131024506/https://www.google.com/
