A leaked video, posted by far-right news website Breitbart, shows top executives of Google and parent company Alphabet express dismay shortly after Donald Trump was elected as the President of United States in November 2016.
This comes amid Trump and his allies' blatant accusation against the leading search engine of promoting political bias and suppressing conservative viewpoints.
The hour-long video is from a TGIF (Thank God It's Friday) town hall gathering where Google CEO Sundar Pichai, co-founder Sergey Brin, Alphabet chief financial officer Ruth Porat, and other members of management including Kent Walker and Eileen Noughton are seen speaking.
Both Brin and Pichai are immigrants. Brin is also a refugee.
Trump has openly expressed hostility against both immigrants and refugees during his campaign and presidential tenure.
"I know this is probably not the most joyous TGIF we have had," says Brin right at the beginning of the session of the video.
"As an immigrant and a refugee, I certainly find this election deeply offensive. I know many of you do, too."
Pichai tells the audience that people should have faith in the democratic process. "There is a lot of fear. It is important to reach out," Pichai said.
“It was a fair and democratic process, and we honor that,” said Walker, who heads Google’s legal and policy team.
Later, in a statement, Google said, "Nothing was said in that meeting, or any other meeting, to suggest that any political bias ever influences the way we build or operate our products."
"To the contrary, our products are built for everyone, and we design them with extraordinary care to be a trustworthy source of information for everyone, without regard to political viewpoint."
Donald Trump Jr, later took to Twitter, saying, “This would be barely believable before the “confidential internal use only” watermark in the video. They were talking in their echo chamber & didn’t care. They control 91% of all search and they get to decide what everyone sees. If this isn’t a Monopoly I don’t know what is.”
