Ex-Google Engineer Says Glitch Blocking Websites Including Drudge, Breitbart Could Have Revealed a Mysterious List

A Tuesday incident in which certain websites briefly vanished from Google search results may have inadvertently exposed an internal list aimed at suppressing certain news outlets, a former engineer for the company said.

“It appears to have revealed the existence of another blacklist that disproportionately targets conservatives,” Mike Wacker theorized in a message to Mediaite. “The glitch is that sites on this blacklist disappeared from Google search results, but the existence of the list is very much by design. And that raises a major question: Why was this blacklist created in the first place, and what else is it used for?”

The issue was evident only briefly on Tuesday morning and early afternoon before it was resolved. However, it was long enough for users to note that they were unable to access websites including Breitbart, The National Pulse, The Drudge Report, Newsbusters, The Bongino Report, and Human Events. At least one left-leaning website, Occupy Democrats, was also affected. Legacy media outlets — including The New York Times and Washington Post — did not appear to be harmed.

Dr. Robert Epstein, a researcher who has argued Google has the power to sway up to 10 percent of American voters in the 2020 election, concurred with Wacker. “It’s likely that a person or algorithm at Google added ‘breitbart.com’ and other URLs to one or more of the company’s blacklists,” Epstein said. “Then, perhaps after some pushback, someone pulled those URLs off the blacklists.”