Google Gives Cover to Trump’s Lies
If one of the most powerful tech companies can’t call out the president’s dishonesty, who can?
President Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic has been a case study in a management style marked by falsehoods and intimidation. Rather than risk inviting his ire, subordinates and fellow Republicans covered for him as he delayed a coordinated response to the coronavirus and it felled nearly 200 Americans.
His political allies haven’t been the only ones to fall into line. Just look at the way the president co-opted Google.
While declaring the national emergency last Friday, President Trump announced that he had enlisted Google to create a broadly available website to help facilitate testing for the virus. He said that 1,700 engineers were working on the site and had “made tremendous progress.”
It sounded ambitious and promising. If only it were true.
What followed were attempts by Google to placate the president and a mad scramble to get done what he’d said it was already doing.
Blindsided by the announcement, Google at first revealed that a subsidiary of its parent company known as Verily was working on a small-scale website initially intended only for health care workers in two Bay Area counties. The Verily site was being developed in coordination with Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, who was taken with the idea after speaking with Verily’s chief executive, Andy Conrad, The New York Times reported. (It rolled out on Sunday but was immediately overwhelmed by people seeking testing.)
But then Google pivoted and announced it was in fact also working on a new national informational coronavirus website. The saga could have ended there, but Mr. Trump instead lambasted the press for correctly reporting that Google initially had no plans for the website he described. And Google did nothing to correct the record, making itself complicit in his stoking of press mistrust.
Mr. Trump asserted on Sunday that Google’s national site was always the plan, while doubling down on his attack, saying, “I don’t know where the press got their fake news, but they got it someplace.” And he said Sundar Pichai, chief executive of Google-parent Alphabet, called to apologize, though he didn’t clarify what he meant by that.
Alphabet refused to confirm to The Times whether such a call even occurred or for what Mr. Pichai would need to apologize. And it declined to discuss the episode further.
It’s not the first time a technology company has bent to Mr. Trump’s will. Apple’s chief executive, Tim Cook, failed to correct Mr. Trump when he took credit in November for opening a Texas computer manufacturing plant that had been in operation since 2013.
Of course, Google and Apple are loath to cross a president whose administration is overseeing antitrust investigations of them. And his vendetta against Amazon’s chief executive, Jeff Bezos, who owns The Washington Post, most likely cost Amazon a roughly $10 billion government contract.
Put simply, Mr. Trump’s bullying often works. The Google flap lays bare his strong-arm tactics and the dangers of being complicit in his crusade against the media, particularly when Americans are trying to make sense of a mushrooming health crisis.
Google’s national site finally went live early Saturday morning, just over a week after Mr. Trump’s surprise announcement. Comprising mostly links to other Google sites, like YouTube how-to videos for those working at home and video updates from the C.D.C., it does not help facilitate coronavirus testing, as Mr. Trump promised. Earlier, its limited Verily site raised concerns on Wednesday from a group of Democratic senators over data-collection practices that include potentially sharing personal health information with contractors, government agencies and other outside parties.
Yes, it’s commendable that Google ultimately committed to creating what may ultimately prove to be a valuable tool in combating the coronavirus. But as one of the world’s most valuable and powerful companies, it should also come clean about the president’s falsehoods.
What the public needs is sober, forthcoming leadership, whether from Silicon Valley or from Washington. It needs a president who speaks accurately about the growing global crisis and works with industry transparently and decisively.
