Google says individual pressure will not change search rankings

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

1. 34:32

   The government would like you to sell Chrome. Can you do all the things you want to do if you're made to sell Chrome? you know we are in a legal process you know i look at having directly been involved in building chrome i think there are very few companies which would have approved you know we we not only improved our product we improved like the state of the web by building chrome we open sourced it we provided us chromium everyone else access to the browser. So I think the amount of R&D, the amount of innovation we put into it, the investments in security, et cetera, we do. So I think- But if you're made to sell it, can you do all the things that you want to do?

2. 35:09

   I don't think that's the scenario we are looking at, but stepping back as a company, look, I think as a company, I think of ourselves as a deeply foundational technology company, which then translates it into products that touch billions of people. And so we do it across many, many things. And so, of course, I think, look, as a company, we are going to continue investing and doing our best to innovate and build a successful business in all scenarios.

3. 35:35

   So that's how I would answer it. The Trump administration is extremely transactional, I would say. You know, the tech industry has a new relationship with Trump in a second term. You were at the inauguration. Have you had conversations about what a settlement might look like and what the Trump administration might demand to make these problems go away? No, like, obviously, we've engaged with the DOJ, or like we do over the years on in the context of all the cases we have. So that's, you know, that's how we normally do these conversations. Trump has very publicly said he doesn't like his search ranking, and he wants it changed in some way. Would you ever adjust the search ranking for Donald Trump? No, like, you know, we have, I mean, I can't, today, the way Google search works is I cannot, no person Google

4. 36:18

   who can influence the ranking algorithm individually. AI mode is different, right? We've seen system prompts adjusted in very chaotic ways from some of your competitors. Is that something that you would be open to in a world where you're serving the full answer? Would you adjust the AI mode responses in response to political pressure? No. Because we've seen, certainly in Grok and others, that system prompts change the answers in dramatic ways.

5. 36:42

   The way we do ranking is sacrosanct to us. You know, we've done it over 25 years. We make a lot of ranking signals we take into account and stuff. And if there's broad feedback from people that something isn't working, right, we will look at it systematically and try and make changes. But, you know, we don't look at individual cases and ever change ranking.