After Google searches for the California Republican Party brought up a box including "Nazism" under the party's ideology, Republican House majority leader and California Congressman Kevin McCarthy made hay, fueling the right-wing theory that Google has an ax to grind against conservatives.
"Dear @Google," Central Valley representative McCarthy wrote Thursday on Twitter. "This is a disgrace. #StopTheBias."
Google confirmed the search-result box charged California Republicans with Nazism, but pointed the finger at Wikipedia, from which it draws much information for the information boxes that appear on the right side of search results.
"We regret that vandalism on Wikipedia briefly appeared on our search results," Google tweeted. "This was not the result of a manual change by Google.
"We have systems in place that catch vandalism before it impacts search results, but occasionally errors get through, and that happened here."
Google is often accused by conservatives of censoring right-wing expression. The Mountain View digital advertising firm's firing of engineer James Damore over a memo arguing women may be biologically less suitable for tech jobs fueled right-wing anger against the company.
McCarthy's tweet drew comments reflecting conservative feelings toward Google, from a reference to "latte-sipping" social justice warriors to a call for the firm to be "dismantled."
Wikipedia acknowledges that it is easy to vandalize or "maliciously edit," since "anyone can edit the site, with the exception of articles that are currently semi-protected, which means that new and unregistered users cannot edit them."
