Trump Is Bending Institutions to His Will. Now, He Wants To Control Google's Search Results

Newsweek

4 hours ago

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It should come as no surprise that the man who vowed to be a dictator only on "day one" has spent the first six months of his presidency trying to assert control over companies and institutions. President Donald Trump has attempted to bully his perceived foes into silence or submission.
Consider the destructive ways that Trump has seized control over institutions. He has held the Paramount–Skydance merger hostage to pressure 60 Minutes over its editorial decisions. He forced Meta to pay $25 million to settle his own baseless lawsuit over so-called unfair treatment. He demanded that Harvard hand over surveillance footage of lawful student protests and pressured law firms to bend a knee to his self-serving whims.
In Trump's quest for control and compliance, Google's search engine results, which millions of Americans rely on every day, could be the next target.
A logo sits illuminated outside the Google booth at ISE 2025 on Feb. 4, 2025, in Barcelona, Spain.
A logo sits illuminated outside the Google booth at ISE 2025 on Feb. 4, 2025, in Barcelona, Spain.The Justice Department's 2021 suit against Google is rooted in something fundamentally boring: the company's "search distribution agreements" with companies like Apple and Samsung. It's a relatively narrow case that's spanned three administrations, and seemingly too dry to spark fears of an authoritarian, MAGA-controlled internet.
But Trump's appointees keep letting the mask slip. For them, it's actually about cracking down on Google's control over its own search results and content policies.
When Judge Amit Mehta ruled against Google in early 2024, the company's competitors and critics came out of the woodwork for a gleeful round of remedy wishcasting. Former President Joe Biden's DOJ, riding a wave of anti-corporatism on the left, proposed a far-reaching set of remedies that strayed well beyond the original case.
As the remedies stage unfolded this year, Trump's DOJ made clear that it didn't see this case as a matter of competition policy, but as a vehicle to punish Google for exercising its free speech rights.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche dropped the pretense at the start of the remedies trial, telling reporters that the case was necessary because "Google has deplatformed conservative speech and has put its thumb on the scale politically for years." Assistant Attorney General Gail Slater went even further, calling Google a threat to "our freedom of speech, our freedom of thought."
Never mind that the actual case says nothing about speech or censorship. To Trump's administration, this is about control, not market share. And they're pulling every lever they can to make sure this case ends the way Trump wants.
The Justice Department's latest set of proposed remedies would put Trump appointees directly under the hood of Google's search engine for the next three to six years. If adopted by Judge Mehta, the DOJ's proposal would allow Trump to hand-pick a five-person "technical committee" with broad control over Google's business and products for a decade.
Google's committee would get unprecedented access to all of Google's "secret sauce": source code, algorithms, and internal systems. They could examine any internal Google document or interview any Google employee.
The DOJ's proposal would also let the Trump administration decide who counts as a "qualified competitor" to Google, and hand those companies the benefits of Google's innovation for free. That opens the door for Trump-aligned platforms like Truth Social and Rumble to get special treatment. Trump has shown, time and again, that he's more than willing to weaponize the government to advance his interests.
It's easy to see where this road leads. Just look at how Trump ousted the Kennedy Center board, simply because he didn't like a drag show. Now, Trump's hand-picked loyalists are reshaping the Center's programming to serve his ideological agenda. At an institution meant to celebrate free expression, dissenting voices are no longer welcome.
Imagine Googling "Donald Trump" and seeing only glowing coverage. Imagine Googling for information on immigration or abortion rights, only to be funneled into MAGA propaganda. If that sounds far-fetched, it shouldn't.
We've already seen what Trump does with power: he punishes critics, installs loyalists, and bends once-independent institutions to his will.
Now, the president stands to gain unprecedented influence over the world's most powerful information tool. It's now up to Judge Mehta to decide whether to hand Trump that power. Let's hope he stops short of giving Trump another weapon to wield against dissent.
Adam Kovacevich is founder and CEO of the center-left tech industry coalition Chamber of Progress. Adam has worked at the intersection of tech and politics for 20 years, leading public policy at Google and Lime and serving as a Democratic Hill aide.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.