Republican nominee Donald Trump called for his supporters to stop using Alphabet’s Google, calling the search engine “illegitimate” as he doubled down on his criticisms of large technology companies.
“Something’s wrong with Google,” Trump said in an interview with controversial video-game celebrity Adin Ross on Monday. “Everybody should maybe just go off Google, not use it.”
Trump was referring to claims from billionaire Elon Musk and others that Google is interfering with efforts to find information about the former U.S. president. Musk alleged that Google had a “search ban” on Trump, sharing an image that appeared to show the search engine’s auto-correct suggesting “donald duck” as one of the options when prompted with “president donald.” Musk has endorsed the Republican nominee and is donating to a pro-Trump super political action committee.
Google declined to comment about Trump’s remarks.
Donald Trump Jr., the nominee’s son, has also made those claims, sharing an image on X that purportedly showed a Google search box with auto-complete options for a query on assassination attempts that does not mention Trump. Trump Jr. called it “intentional election interference from Google.”
