A recent glitch on Google temporarily removed US President Joe Biden’s name and term in the White House from search results for the prompt “US Presidents” on Thursday morning.
The glitch was fixed around 2 am Eastern time, but the news quickly made headlines internationally. However, the exact duration of Biden’s name being excluded from Google’s history remains unknown.
According to the search results during the glitch, newly-elected President Donald Trump appeared to have served as the last two presidents of the United States before the sequence reverted to its original order, listing presidents Obama, W. Bush, Clinton, and others, respectively.
The removal of Biden’s term was first noticed by BlueSky users, many of whom speculated it was a deliberate move by a big tech company to appease Donald Trump.
The incident caused outrage in the liberal-leaning community on BlueSky, where users saw it as part of a broader issue involving tech companies allegedly displaying political biases.
Google has not commented on the glitch that erased Biden’s name and tenure.
Simultaneously, in recent days, millions of Meta users reported their accounts were automatically following President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance without permission, with no option to unfollow.
Meta’s Communications Director Andy Stone defended the platform in a post on X.
“People were not made to automatically follow any of the official Facebook or Instagram accounts for the President, Vice President or First Lady,” Stone said on X.
He added, “Those accounts are managed by the White House so with a new administration, the content on those pages changes.”
However, in a post on Threads, he wrote, “It may take some time for follow and unfollow requests to go through as these accounts change hands.”
On Monday, January 20, leading tech industry figures, including Apple CEO Tim Cook, Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg, and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, attended Donald Trump’s oath-taking ceremony as the 47th President of the United States.
International media reported that they joined their “First Buddy,” Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and X (formerly Twitter), who is a vocal supporter of Trump.