When compared to autofill results from other search engines, the suspicions become even more pronounced. Autofill is supposed to give the most weight to those terms searched for by the most people. But Google autofill appears to avoid negative search terms even if they are popular.

Has Google altered its search engine so that results favor Hillary Clinton? The controversy is about Google's "autofill" function that completes search terms automatically.

Washington Free Beacon has several startling examples:

“Crime” and “indictment” are not the only terms Google is keeping hidden from searches of Hillary Clinton, a Washington Free Beacon analysis finds. Common search terms associated with Clinton appear to have been scrubbed from Google as the tech giant has been accused of manipulating its autocomplete results to favor the Democratic presidential candidate. Matt Lieberman of SourceFed released a video showing examples of Google skewing its autocomplete results for Clinton, while other search engines simply display the most searched terms. “While researching for a wrap-up on the June 7 Presidential Primaries, we discovered evidence that Google may be manipulating autocomplete recommendations in favor of Hillary Clinton,” SourceFed wrote. “If true, this would mean that Google Searches aren’t objectively reflecting what the majority of Internet searches are actually looking for, possibly violating Google’s algorithm.” For example, when searching Hillary Clinton “cri,” Google finishes the phrase as “crime reform.” On Yahoo, the result is “criminal charges.” On Google’s own trend website, there were not enough searches for Hillary Clinton and “crime reform” to build a graph of the results. Typing Hillary Clinton and “ind” gives Google users results on Hillary Clinton and Indiana. On Microsoft’s Bing search engine, a user gets Hillary Clinton and “indictment,” yielding results for the FBI investigation into Clinton’s private email server. Just putting the name “Hillary Clinton” into Google, you are directed towards searches for her “twitter,” “email,” “age,” and “speech.” Notably missing is the second top result on Bing, which is of her potential “indictment.”

A video gives more background on the controversy.

The actual evidence that Google is skewing search results is slim. What we have are strong suppositions based on facts. But without any actual documents or testimony admitting to the bias, we are left with suspicions – strong suspicions, to be sure, given the vast differences between Google results and results from other search engines.

Google says, "It's entirely innocent we are." This from a company that saw its representatives visit the White House hundreds of times during President Obama's terms.

No more damage can be done to Google than to call into question the integrity of its search parameters. Internet companies can live or die based on their Google ranking – how far up the page they appear in searches. If Google is seen as playing favorites, it would be a blow to its credibility. That means lost revenue – perhaps the most just punishment if the company is, indeed, acting as a surrogate for Hillary Clinton.