Why doesn’t Google list Joe Biden on its list of US presidents?

Former President Joe Biden’s presidency was reportedly absent from Google’s list of “US Presidents” for a period Thursday morning.

Newsweek has contacted Google outside normal business hours via email for comment.

Why it matters

These reports come amid a series of online complaints about US politics, from claims that TikTok blocked anti-Trump content to millions of Meta users complaining that they had been forced to follow Vice President JD Vance’s Instagram accounts and President Donald Trump after Monday’s inauguration.

There has also been an increase in discourse about a shift to the right in the tech world, with Meta removing fact-checkers and hiring Republican Joel Kaplan, the former deputy chief of staff under President George W. Bush, as their new policy chief.

What to know

The issue was noticed on the social media platforms, X and Bluesky.

The tone between the two sites was different, with Bluesky users furious and X users seeming quite happy about the omission.

A Bluesky user wrote: “Go to the search, expand the page, click feedback.

“Tell Google you see and don’t appreciate their Orwellian revisionist history.”

One X user wrote: “What’s going on? Trump showed up twice like Biden never existed. Why is this funny.”

Google has not publicly commented on the issues at the time of reporting.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai was present at the inauguration of President Donald Trump on Monday, January 20, along with other tech executives, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Space X CEO Elon Musk.

Zuckerberg, Bezos and Musk were given priority seats for President Donald Trump’s second inauguration, in what is seen as a reflection of a new era in which the influence of Silicon Valley is at full strength.

Some users have expressed concern about the relationship between Trump and tech CEOs. This was highlighted by complaints from Instagram users that they had been secretly “following” Trump and Vice President JD Vance’s profiles on the social media platform.

Meta Communications Officer Andy Stone, responded to the reports on Meta’s Threads: “A reminder: Facebook.com/POTUS and Facebook.com/White… accounts are administered by the White House. They change when the occupant of the White House changes.”

What people say

A Bluesky user wrote: “If this continues, this will be one of the boldest and most dangerous moments in the existence of the Internet, as it will be a clear show of force that those in opposition will disappear completely.”

A user on X said: “LMAO, some based engineer at Google is /our guy/ but is about to lose his job.”

What’s next

From As of 4:00 a.m. ET, Biden’s tenure has been restored to Google’s list of presidents.

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