Julian Assange says that Google working closely with Hillary Clinton presidential campaign

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange claimed that Google was working closely with Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign to promote the Democratic presidential candidate. Assange, who is holed up in Equadorian embassy in London, appeared via a video link during ‘New Era of Journalism: Farewell to Mainstream international media’ forum in Moscow.

Speaking about ongoing presidential campaign, Assange said: “Google is directly engaged with Hillary Clinton’s campaign” and claimed the technology giant used the US State Department on a “a quid pro quo” basis.

“Of course when she is in power… she is a problem for freedom of speech. We know what she is going to do. And she made the chart for the destruction of Libya, she was involved in the process of taking the Libyan armoury and sending it to Syria.”

It is already known that Google has had good relations with the Obama adminstration. According to data from the Campaign for Accountability and The Intercept, Google and its affiliates have had at least 427 meetings at the White House during President Obama’s tenure.

Assange seem to have only confirmed that. He reiterated his claims that Clinton is a “war hawk” that “seemingly” wants to start wars.

“What we have with Clinton is someone who is a hawk but who has the tools of legal interventionism, a rhetorical cover to start wars, and someone who seemingly wants to start them… From WikiLeaks’ perspective Hillary Clinton is a problem in terms of war and peace.”

He also pointed out that former Google CEO Eric Schmidt is now heading the Pentagon innovation board.

“Google is heavily integrated with Washington power, at personal level and at business level. Google, which has increasing control over the distribution channels,… is intensely allying itself with the US exceptionalism.

“It [Google] shows the will to use that at different levels. It will inevitably influence its audience.”

The founder and editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks added: “Google is an intensely Washington, DC-aligned company. I see a Google exit from China… It seems much more to do with Google’s feeling that it is part of ‘family America’ and that it is opposed to the Chinese.”

Why this is important?

Even a bit of boost from either Google or Facebook can make or mar Hillary Clinton and her political rival, Donald Trump. Fortune reported last year that researchers had found that “Google search rankings could potentially decide the outcome of an election”. While Facebook is known to hide conservative news stories from its trending items list.

“Through five experiments in two countries… biased rankings in search results can shift the opinions of undecided voters by 20% or more, sometimes even reaching as high as 80% in some demographic groups.

“If Google tweaks its algorithm to show more positive search results for a candidate, the researchers say, the searcher may form a more positive opinion of him or her.”

Donald Trump, the presidential candidate from Republican party who is likely to see a face off with Hillary Clinton in November 2016, is yet to react on this news.