Elon Musk targets Google and Microsoft: 'Even with best of intentions, they can’t help but introduce bias'

Elon Musk, owner of X and founder of Tesla has once again criticised tech giants Google and Microsoft saying that ‘even with the best of intentions, they can’t help but introduce bias’. Quoting a Quiver Quantitative report which suggests Google and Microsoft are the companies making major donations to the Kamala Harris/Joe Biden campaign, Musk said that the two ‘very disproportionately donate to the Democratic Party’.

The Quiver Quantitative data suggests that Google employees contributed $1.4 million to Democratic Party campaign, while Microsoft employees contributed $743,000. Behind them are Brown & Brown ($324,000), Johnson & Johnson ($239,000), Apple ($225,000), Oracle ($218,000), Wells Fargo ($169,000) and Nvidia ($169,000).
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, on the other hand, received the most donations from employees and executives of American Airlines ($134,000) and Walmart ($83,000), as per the data. The ranking was followed by Lockheed Martin ($69,000), United Airlines ($67,000), FedEx ($61,000), Wells Fargo ($59,000), Johnson & Johnson ($57,000), Brown & Brown ($56,000), Southwest Airlines ($55,000) and Northrop Grumman ($52,000).

Reacting to the data, Elon Musk said:
“Google & Microsoft very disproportionately donate to the Democratic Party. Between them, they control close to 100% of web browsers and search. Even with the best of intentions, they can’t help but introduce bias,” he added.

This is not the first time that Musk has called out biases in Google search results. Earlier this year, he criticised Google’s autocomplete feature for “assassination attempt of” and “president donald” not showing Trump in the autocomplete predictions. He then said that Google had a “search ban” on Trump. Google responded by saying that “That’s not happening, and we want to set the record straight.”