Senior Google Manager On Search Engine’s Power: ‘You Are Just Plain And Simple Trying To Play God’… ‘The Power’s In The Search’ … ‘Trump Says Something, Misinformation, You’re Gonna Delete’ … ‘If A Democratic Leader Says That, Then, You’re Gonna Leave It’

[SAN JOSE, CALIF.—Oct. 19, 2020] A senior Google manager exposed the search engine and social media giant’s suppression of speech and democracy in a Project Veritas report released today.

Play

“I feel suffocated at Google,” said Ritesh Lakhkar, a technical program manager in Google’s Cloud division, to a Project Veritas undercover journalist. “Because on one side you have this professional or unprofessional attitude, and on the other side, you have this ultra-leftist attitude, and your entire existence is questioned.”

Lakhkar said Google exercises deity-like control over the information Americans receive.

“You’re like playing selective God,” he said.

“If it was fraud, it doesn’t matter, but for Trump, Melania Trump, it matters, and on the other side, Trump says something, misinformation, you’re gonna delete that because it’s illegal under whatever pretext,” he said. “If a Democratic leader says that, then you’re gonna leave it like that, so I’m like, okay, you’re not following one way or the other. You are just plain and simple trying to play God.”

Ritesh Lakhkar: “The power’s in the search, yeah.”

Journalist: “The power to control reality. How do you feel about that? How does that make you feel?”

Lakhkar: “Helpless.”

James O’Keefe, the founder and CEO of Project Veritas, said, “Ritesh Lakhkar told our journalist the truth about Google, the company he has worked at for years. With the presidential election just days away, he is calling out Big Tech.”

Journalist: “You go to search and you type in ‘Donald Trump,’ and it’s like all negative—"

Ritesh Lakhkar: “Yeah.”

Journalist: “--and when you type in ‘Joe Biden,’ it’s all positive.”

Lakhkar: “Because—"

Patrick Markan, lead mechanical engineer at Fitbit: “It’s skewed by the owners or the drivers of the algorithm, right?”

Lakhkar: “It’s skewed by the owners and the drivers of the algorithm. Like so, if I say “Hey Google, here’s $2 billion, feed this data set of whenever ‘Joe Biden’ is searched, you’ll get these results.”

O’Keefe said, “This ranking member at Google says there will be riots at Google if Trump wins, he says Google and YouTube play God with their power and even raises concerns about Google outsourcing American jobs.”

Ritesh Lakhkar: “I can’t keep doing this. Go and teach Chinese people how to do American jobs and come back and get surveilled on the way.”

Journalist: “Were you doing that for Google?

Lakhkar: “Google, FitBit. Yeah. Those two companies, primarily.”

Journalist: “So, you were going there and working for Google in China?”

Lakhkar: “Yeah.”

Journalist: “Wow. That’s scary. I’m scared they’re gonna start doing stuff like that here.”

Lakhkar: “Yeah. And when you have these candid conversations with your friends who are centrist or Republicans, then you wonder, all of a sudden, like, ‘Oh, I should vote for Trump.’”

Lakhkar told a Project Veritas journalist that playing God with Google users and YouTube made him uncomfortable and he wants to leave Google. “Yeah, it doesn’t jive with me.”

Journalist: “You guys own YouTube, too, right?”

Ritesh Lakhkar: “We play God with that, too.”

Lakhkar said on the Google-owned YouTube, the search engine giant deletes all controversial content. “It’s not a good thing and I agree with that, but if it’s freedom of speech, both sides need to get their opinion.”

The Google technical program manager said it was a part of the Google culture that is making him conflicted.

“Morally and ethically I disagree,” he said.

Journalist: “I mean, the leftists must be in charge, I imagine.” 

Ritesh Lakhkar: “I don’t know that, I don’t know that. Because the founders were ultra-leftist, we know that, but Sundar [Pichai], I’m not sure.”

Lakhkar said an example of Google’s leftwing culture was the reaction to Donald J. Trump’s 2016 election as president.

“When Trump won the first time, people were crying in the corridors of Google. There were protests, there were marches. I guess, group therapy sessions for employees--organized by HR,” he said.

“There were days, like: ‘Okay, don’t come to work. We understand this is like a shocking event. Take some time off and cool off and we’ll regather again to figure out our strategy,’” he said. “That kind of stuff--I’m like--are you serious, are you kidding me?”

Lakhkar said he worked for other major industrial and medical companies, and none of them had the leftist culture he deals with at Google.

“When I worked for Caterpillar or Corning, politics didn’t really matter,” he said. “You just do your job and: ‘Let’s make tractors, let’s make glass.’”