Published on: August 30, 2025 10:01 am IST
Gmail Warning: FTC President Andrew Ferguson has warned Google’s parents’ allegations that Gmail’s spam republican incorrectly targets emails.
The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has issued a warning to the Google’s original company Alphabet Inc., worrying about whether Gmail’s spam filtering system incorrectly targets Republican email. FTC President Andrew Ferguson sent a letter to CEO Sundar Pichai, stating that the agency was taking allegations of email suppression “seriously”.
The warning follows the complaints of the Congress’s Republican, who have long accused Google of directing their campaign messages to spam folders. Earlier this year, several MPs urged the FTC to investigate whether Gmail is being used to suppress political communication.
In his letter, Ferguson said: “I write because of recent reporting that suggests that the administration of Gmail’s alphabet is designed for partisan effects, and accordingly to inform you that the alphabet may engage in unfair or misleading acts or practices.
Google has constantly denied political bias in Gmail’s filtering system. In response to the FTC warning, Google spokesman Jane Croider told Exios: “Gmail’s spam filters look at a variety of objective signals – as people mark a particular email as spam, or if a special advertising agency is sending a high amount of email, which is often marked by the people, then it is a to see all the semists.
Republican has repeatedly accused large technical companies of discriminating against orthodox voices, although regulators and courts have not found enough evidence to prove political bias. In 2023, the Federal Election Commission dismissed a complaint, alleging that Gmail favored the Democrats on the Republican, in which the two sides agreed to close the commission’s case. Later, a federal judge also dismissed a related trial, given that it was a “close case”, but concluded that the Republican National Committee had “not sufficiently promised that Google had worked in bad faith.”
The debate on how Gmail handles political email is unlikely to settle soon, Republican continues to look at Google’s practices with suspicion, while the company states that its filters work the same way for everyone.
