Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai speaks at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation CEO Summit in San Francisco on Nov. 16, 2023.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Google donated $1 million to President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration fund, becoming the latest major tech company to try and curry some goodwill with the incoming administration.
“Google is pleased to support the 2025 inauguration, with a livestream on YouTube and a direct link on our homepage. We’re also donating to the inaugural committee,” Karan Bhatia, Google’s global head of government affairs and public policy, told CNBC in a statement.
The company made its donation on Monday. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Meta both announced $1 million donations to the inaugural fund late last year, and Amazon and Apple CEO Tim Cook have also reportedly contributed.
After a candidate wins the presidential election in the U.S., they appoint an inaugural committee to organize and finance inaugural events like the opening ceremonies, galas and the parade. Unlike a direct contribution to a candidate’s campaign, there are no limits on how much an individual — or a corporation or labor group — can give to an inaugural committee.
Google has donated to inaugurals in the past, and the YouTube livestream and link to the inauguration on Google’s homepage are in line with previous inaugurations, a spokesperson said.
Trump has had a rocky relationship with major tech companies over the years and has not shied away from criticism of the sector following the election. He signaled late last year that he wouldn’t rule out antitrust enforcement, which is a particularly sore spot for Google.
A U.S. district judge ruled in August that the company has illegally held a monopoly in search and text advertising. Arguments in a second antitrust case about Google’s advertising business closed in November, though a verdict has not yet been announced.
“Big Tech has run wild for years, stifling competition in our most innovative sector and, as we all know, using its market power to crack down on the rights of so many Americans, as well as those of Little Tech!” Trump wrote in a Dec. 4 post on Truth Social.
Former Alphabet President Sergey Brin and Google CEO Sundar Pichai met with Trump after the election, and Pichai publicly congratulated the president-elect on his “decisive victory” in a post on X.
Tech CEOs have made substantial moves to publicly show their support for Trump and repair their relationship with the incoming president.
Meta on Tuesday announced sweeping changes to its approach to content moderation across its platforms. The company eliminated its third-party fact-checking program in favor of a “Community Notes” model, much like the one that exists on Elon Musk‘s X.
Additionally, Meta removed restrictions on subjects like immigration and gender, and implemented a new approach to policy enforcement that will focus on illegal and high-severity violations. This means fewer posts containing misinformation will be suppressed or taken down.
Trump lauded Meta’s changes during a news conference Tuesday. When asked whether he believed Meta’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, was “directly responding to the threats that you have made to him in the past,” Trump responded, “Probably.”
— CNBC’s Kevin Breuninger contributed to this report.
