President Donald Trump's claim that Google is biased against him and other conservatives is a distraction from the bigger issues facing technology giants, an academic told CNBC Wednesday.

"I think Trump's comment about Google's algorithm being biased really distracts from a lot of these bigger debates that we need to be having as a society about how Google's algorithms — as well as Facebook and Twitter and all these social media platforms — how they are really shaping our lives, how we interact with one another on social media, how we find political news and information," Samantha Bradshaw, a researcher for the computational propaganda project at the Oxford Internet Institute, told CNBC's "Squawk Box Europe."

"There are some really deep questions here and Trump's claims about bias really distract away from some of those deeper, meaningful questions," she added.

The U.S. leader last week accused Google of rigging search results to prioritize negative coverage and left-leaning news outlets. He warned the issue "will be addressed," suggesting regulatory consequences for social media companies.

Trump then mentioned rivals Facebook and Twitter by name, saying all three companies were "treading on very, very troubled territory and they have to be careful." All three platforms have denied political bias in the algorithmic tailoring of news content.