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Google wants to be the home of the 2016 election horse race

Google wants to be the home of the 2016 election horse race

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Google is doing all it can to make its search engine the fastest and best way to stay informed about the US presidential election. Starting today, the company will show presidential candidates' stances on topics like immigration, climate change, and economic policy in the form of quotes culled from news articles. Google Search will also give users a rundown of the up-to-date delegate count for each party. The features are available when searching on Chrome with a smartphone, on the web, and within the Google mobile app. Google says it's made results available in English and Spanish.

You can search broadly for a term like "Donald Trump issue stances" and get a rundown of the candidate and their stances, or you can specify what you're looking for with "Marco Rubio on immigration" to see a series of swipe-able cards designed to form a narrative around the person's opinions on the issue. To get specific caucus information, you can swap out the general "primary results" search for a phrase like "Iowa primary" to see a particular state. The company is also incorporating caucus results and voting reminders into Google Now cards.

It makes perfect sense Google would want to capitalize on the heightened interest in candidates now that the election is in full swing. The company has already made itself a key network and cable TV partner for debates. Just last week, Google updated search to allow campaigns to post fleshed out text, photos, and videos to display within search results as "long-form" rebuttals to make up for the lack of time and context a candidate must work with onstage at a debate.

It's just another the way the internet's biggest companies are taking over the election. Twitter, by design, lets politicians trade potshots and circumvent traditional media channels. Now Google search results are becoming both a destination for users and a format for campaigns to disseminate information that aides a certain candidate. In the end, Google and Twitter both win.