A rumor circulating online in early February 2025 claimed Google suppressed search predictions to "censor" information about the potential of a third impeachment of U.S. President Donald Trump. According to the users who shared the rumor, Google's alleged suppression sought to help Trump in the weeks following his Jan. 20 inauguration, where the tech company's CEO Sundar Pichai and other industry leaders had prime seating. Google and other tech companies also donated to the inauguration.
Beginning on or around Feb. 2, users on Facebook, Reddit, Threads, TikTok and X claimed Google's autocomplete functionality — which aims to predict users' searches as they type — failed to populate "impeach Trump" (without quotation marks) when typing out "impeach T." They further said typing "impeach B" suggested searches for "impeach Biden 2024," impeach Bill Clinton" and "impeach Bush"; and "impeach O" displayed "impeach Obama."
Several users posted videos documenting their searches on Feb. 2. One user replied, "My god, I just tried it and this is real. Sick to my stomach." Another person added, "This is disturbingly telling." Some users said the lack of a search suggestion indicated censorship.
While it was true Google prohibited search predictions from displaying for phrases specifically suggesting to "impeach Trump," we noted a number of factors that provided the full context about this rumor.
In an email to Snopes, a Google spokesperson told us, "Our policies prohibit autocomplete predictions that could be interpreted as a position for or against a political figure. In this case, some predictions were appearing that shouldn't have been, and we're taking action to block them." They also said that while their automated systems aim to prevent policy-violating predictions from appearing, those systems don't successfully catch all of them.
Google's autocomplete policies state: "We don't allow predictions that can be interpreted as: a position for or against any political figure or party, or a claim about the participation in or integrity of the electoral process." According to our reading of the policy and additional information provided by the spokesperson, the banned phrase "impeach Trump" suggests an action, while the allowed prediction "Trump impeachment" could constitute a user's request for historical information about his past impeachments.
The Google spokesperson told us the company took action to remove predictions that violated the policies, including "impeach Biden," "impeach Clinton" and others.
'Impeach Trump' results, past impeachments
We performed a limited number of tests of the rumor with several devices and experienced results similar to what users claimed. However, we also noted completing a search for "impeach Trump" (without quotation marks) displayed plenty of recent search results about past and present discussions regarding impeaching Trump.
For example, in our tests, the top Google search result displayed as a FreeSpeechForPeople.org page with the headline "Over 100,000 People Urge Congress to Begin Impeachment Investigation Against President Trump." Other results included links to information about Trump's first two impeachments hosted on Congress.gov, a CommonDreams.org article offering a petition to "impeach Trump again," a Newsweek article about a potential third Trump impeachment, ImpeachDonaldTrumpNow.org and others.
Further, as we referenced earlier in this article, typing "impeachment" in the Google search bar provided an allowed suggestion for Trump. "Impeach p" also showed "impeach president" and "impeach President Trump" — suggestions the company might soon remove to comply with its aforementioned policies. Meanwhile, "Trump" displayed "Trump impeachment," among other suggestions viewed by users located outside the U.S. The Google spokesperson noted a search such as "Trump impeachment" (without quotation marks) constituted an allowed informational search related to historical events: his past impeachments.
Congress twice impeached Trump, first in 2019 for allegedly pressuring Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to investigate then-former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden, and again in 2021 for Trump's role in inciting the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.