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Fact Check: Google Mistakenly Reported Harris Was Biased on Election Night
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Fact Check: Google Mistakenly Reported Harris Was Biased on Election Night

Conservatives and social media commentators began sharing their claims on election night. Google He predicted a pro-Kamala Harris bias and claimed the results were on the map where voters could vote for him rather than Trump.

Photos adorned with a huge photo of Harris as vice president and former president were also shared on the search engine’s home page. Donald Trump The results were left overnight.

However, the truth behind these claims was directly disputed by Google after the similar incident. SpaceX founder and Trump ally Elon Musk I started sharing these on X before excitement.

Google
False stories about Google manipulating search results for the election emerged on November 5. The search engine giant was accused of giving preferential treatment to Kamala Harris.

bigtunaonline/iStock Editorial / Getty Images Plus

Claim

An article about X Viewed 45.6 million times on November 5, 2024 by user Doge Designer said: “BREAKING NEWS: Google reveals a ‘Where to Vote’ section with a map Kamala Harrisbut not for Donald Trump.

“Google is the biggest corporate donor” Democratic Party

The post included a video of someone searching for “Where can I vote for Harris” and providing a map result. When the same search query was made for Donald Trump, the map result was not shown.

Elon Musk responded to this post: “Do others see this too?” His answer was seen 42.8 million times.

Another post A parody account by Tusli Gabbard showed the Google homepage filled with a picture of Kamala Harris.

“Do you think Google intervened in the election in favor of Kamala Harris?” user wrote.

“Yes or no?”

facts

Although the Google map result occurred, there is no evidence that Google intentionally designed the results to show where to vote for Harris. The company said the result was due to the similar place name. There is also no evidence that the search engine reflected a large photo of Harris on the search page.

In a reply post In X, sent by Google’s communications team, the map result was triggered due to its similarity to a county in Texas, and similar results were obtained when searching for where to vote for Trump’s running mate. J.D. Vance.

“The ‘Where to vote’ panel is triggered for some specific searches because Harris is also the name of a county in Texas,” the post said.

“Same goes for ‘Vance,’ because that’s also the name of a county. Correction is coming. Note that very few people actually search for polling places that way.”

The same account later posted a message stating that the issue was resolved.

As for the homepage image, Google’s homepage hasn’t changed its white background since 1988, beyond changing the Doodle image honoring important people and important dates. recently curated homepage gallery shows.

The image of the homepage featuring Harris appears to have been created by artificial intelligence; There are clear signs of AI text generation next to the image and in the search bar.

Decision

WRONG

WRONG.

There is no evidence that Google search results are biased. Saying that it corrected the search results, Google stated that this was because the engine returned results for place names, and noted that a similar result was experienced when searching for JD Vance.

Harris’ image on the homepage appears to have been created by artificial intelligence.

FACT CHECKED BY Newsweek’s Fact Check team