US tech giant Google has recently discontinued offering popular "Realtime search Trends" in Korea, a feature long banned by its Korean rivals such as Naver and Daum due to the possibility of manipulating public opinion.

Google Korea said in a statement Wednesday: “We have decided to remove the feature from Google Search in Korea. The feature is no longer available here No further elaboration on the reason and timing of the suspension was given.

Naver and Daum suspended their popular search term features in 2020 and 2021, respectively, amid mounting pressures that they could be abused to manipulate public opinion during politically sensitive periods such as elections.

Google started providing daily trending searches via its Google Trends feature globally, and the real-time service only became available in Korea late last month. Daily trending searches remain available.

“Despite Korea making up a tiny 1 percent of Google’s traffic flow, they may be well aware of the negative sentiment toward real-time search terms,” an industry source said. “With the latest decision, concerns about the possible reverse discrimination against Naver and Daum have also been relieved.” The Korea Herald.

All countries should adopt such measures during an election period to block algorithms that are purposely aimed at supporting one political party or candidate – or suppressing stories that may harm the party or candidate that the social media company is known to support.