In a Tuesday letter to the House Judiciary Committee, Google both admitted that the Biden administration pressured it to remove content from YouTube, even when it didn’t violate the platform’s policies, and promised to reinstate the accounts of anyone who had been banned for political speech.

Google’s YouTube censorship was applied heavily to users discussing COVID-19 and elections, a fact that has long been a sore spot for conservatives. The letter could be seen as Google attempting to rectify what many conservatives viewed as a severe transgression. 

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The move comes as Google has, in the words of the chief executive for its public sector division, gone “all in” on government contracting. The tech conglomerate has been engaged in fierce competition with its rivals to secure lucrative federal awards, especially regarding artificial intelligence products. Additionally, the Department of Justice seeks to kneecap Google by declaring its digital advertising technology monopolistic. The tech giant is currently involved in legal proceedings with the DOJ to determine a “remedy” for this finding.

Observers have claimed that the apparent rightward shift among tech companies like Google, characterized by the reining in of corporate diversity, equity, and inclusion policies and praise of the president, is a function of those same firms seeking to curry favor with an administration that has proven willing to cut off or otherwise punish those who are ideologically opposed to it. 

“It’s certainly not difficult to believe the Biden administration pressured Google to curate information along a COVID party line, and Google’s new business interests with the federal government could certainly be playing a part in their new transparency,” Capital Research Center Director of Communications Sarah Lee told the Washington Examiner. “But there’s also a potentially devastating antitrust remedy trial starting in which the Trump DOJ has suggested some rather harsh penalties regarding Google’s ad exchange technology … So the new transparency, while ultimately good for society, might be less than completely altruistic.”

“It’s worth asking why Google wasn’t vocal sooner about the pressure campaign it faced to censor conservatives,” Lee added. “Was it because they were protecting their own interests over the interests of the people who use their products? That’s not a very good way to prove you care about consumer welfare.”

Google’s federal contracting with the Trump administration has proven lucrative thus far.

In recent months alone, the Department of Defense has awarded Google a $200 million-ceiling contract to accelerate its AI and cloud capabilities, the General Services Administration purchased a “a suite of AI and cloud services” from Google after the company agreed to discount its services by 71% to undercut competitors, and the Defense Logistics Agency has granted it $48 million to modernize its supply chain operations. 

Google has invested significant resources into accessing public contracts. The tech company, for example, met the Defense Department’s Impact Level 6 security accreditation in May after three years, an endeavor that opens up an array of high-value federal awards for the firm and risks becoming a costly failure if the administration turns against it. 

While it’s impossible to know which federal contracts Google is competing for, as bids are confidential, the System for Awards Management, the government contracting database, displays reams of contract solicitations that align with Google’s product offerings, presenting ample opportunity for the firm to rake in even more revenue. 

Google is confident that, despite the uncertainty the Trump administration has brought to federal contracting, it is well-suited to continue securing awards.

“I am feeling super confident in our ability to work with this administration to show them that Google is all in,” Google Public Sector CEO Karen Dahut said in June. “All of these years of having served this industry, I feel like this is the first time I feel like the administration is really willing to make a change.”

Dahut’s confidence is backed by hard dollars.

Since President Donald Trump’s November 2024 victory, Google has hired six GOP-linked lobbyists and donated $1 million to the president’s inauguration fund, a move many saw as an attempt to win influence. Presidents have considerable license to do as they please with funds donated to their inaugural committees, with few transparency requirements, boosting the potential of such donations to buy sway. 

Daniel Cochrane, a senior research associate at the Heritage Foundation, sees Google’s letter as a way for the firm to pacify conservatives without making meaningful changes.

“Alphabet’s response to the House Judiciary Committee is disingenuous and misleads the public about the company’s active role in censoring speech and manipulating U.S. elections,” he said. “As I said in my testimony before the Texas State Senate last year, ‘Platforms such as Google are… deploying new methods of social manipulation like prebunking, designed to psychologically inoculate voters against (what they consider) mis or dis information.’ Those manipulations continue — albeit in a more subtle form.”

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“For example, a number of creators and news organizations shared evidence suggesting that YouTube may be throttling content critical of the Chinese Communist Party,” Cochrane added. “Research psychologist, Robert Epstein, has documented how the company used subtle ‘ephemeral experiences’ to influence millions of voters in every election since at least 2016. Alphabet’s carefully worded letter to the committee is little more than a clever distraction — an attempt to direct scrutiny away from its own misconduct.”

Google and the House Judiciary Committee did not respond to requests for comment.