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Google Honors Veterans Day, Finally
theodp writes "It took nearly a decade, but Google has done a turnabout and is honoring Veterans Day with a special holiday design for its famous logo. Users who log onto Google's home page are greeted with three World War I-era helmets capping the letters 'o' and 'e' in Google's name. The decoration is a marked departure for the company, which has come under fire from veterans' groups for ignoring American holidays such as Veterans Day and Memorial Day since Google's inception in 1999."
Uh, November the 11th sort of is an internationally observed day - in most parts of the world it's called Armistice day or Rememberance day, though. Much as I hate to break up the nationalism party, the end of World War I did sort of affect more than just Americans.
Here's the text from a google search and finding another blog carrying the text:
By Joe Kovacs
© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com
Google's commemoration of Veterans Day 2007, the first time it has honored the U.S. holiday
It took nearly a decade, but Internet giant Google is finally honoring Veterans Day with a special holiday design for its famous logo.
Users who log onto Google's home page today will see three World War I-era helmets capping the letters "o" and "e" in Google's name.
The decoration is a marked departure for the company, which has come under fire from veterans' groups for ignoring American holidays such as Veterans Day and Memorial Day since Google's inception in 1999.
The firm, known for its widely used search engine, regularly modifies its logo to commemorate holidays, historical events and figures.
"Maybe all the pressure is paying off," said WND reader Donna Hunter of Philadelphia. "God bless all our soldiers!"
When the Los Angeles Times asked the California-based firm about the issue earlier this year, spokeswoman Sunny Gettinger responded, "Google's special logos tend to be lighthearted and often scientific in nature. We do not believe we can convey the appropriate somber tone through this medium to mark holidays like Memorial Day."
The Ledger newspaper of Lakeland, Fla., called that excuse "laughable."
As WND reported last year, Google had no problem honoring the war dead of other countries, creating a special logo with poppies for Remembrance Day in Australia, Canada, Ireland and the United Kingdom. http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=52914
And for the ninth year in a row this past spring, Google declined to mark Memorial Day - something the company has done for the Chinese New Year, Valentine's Day, Halloween and other observances. http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=55900
Just last month Google acknowledged an accomplishment of the communist Soviet Union, which launched the Sputnik space satellite 50 years ago.
With the surprise launch of Sputnik 1 in 1957, the Soviet Union leaped ahead in the race for space between the U.S. and the communist empire. Sputnik's success followed the failure of the first two Project Vanguard launch attempts by the U.S. http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=57982
Google also has given special honors for astronomer Percival Lowell, artist Edvard Munch and Louis Braille, inventor of the writing system for the blind.
Other days commemorated included National Teachers Day, Women's Day, Ray Charles' birthday, World Water Day and St. George's Day.
Besides overlooking Memorial Day and Veterans Day until today, it also has ignored Christmas.
Google has been criticized for its one-sided political contributions and content policies:
Rejecting an ad for a book critical of Bill and Hillary Clinton while continuing to accept anti-Bush themes
Rejecting ads critical of Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., while continuing to run attack ads against former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas.
Allowing the communist Chinese government to have the search engine block "objectionable" search terms such as "democracy."
In addition, the company came under fire for an editorial decision giving preferential placement to large, elite media outlets such as CNN and the BBC over independent news sources, such as WND, even if they are more recent, pertinent and exhaustive in their coverage.
As WND reported, 98 percent of all political donations by Google employees went to support Democrats, and as a matter of fact, Al Gore is now a senior adviser to Google.
Google CEO Eric Schmidt gave the maximum legal limit of donations to Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry and to primary candidate Howard Dean.
Schmidt also contributed the maximum amount to Sen. Clinton.
) Human Kind Vs Human Creation
) It'd be interesting to see how many humans would survive to serve us.
They already have that. Just go to preferences->homepage and disable him. http://slashdot.org/users.pl?op=edithome
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
1) There's separate Google sites for non-American users, so recognizing Memorial Day doesn't have to offend anyone outside of the US.
2) 11/11 isn't just an American Holiday. There were several nations involved in WWI. Most (on the winning side) recognize Armistice Day (last I checked), in some form or another. Hence the WWI style flak helmets on the logo, which are rather appropriate. In the US and most Commonwealth countries they have since extended the Holiday to honoring all Veterans, though...
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
Yea, but that does not remove him from the RSS feed.
Of course, it would be simpler if I could filter articles in akregator the same way I do with kmail.
National Socialism "considers individual and other societal interests subordinate to the interests of the state."
How does this differ from Liberalism/Socialism? Or Hillary Clinton's famous "We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good."
As far as I can tell, the one difference between Nazi's and Communists were their stances on private property - Nazi's believed in Private Property insofar as it did what the state directed it to do. VW didn't come up with the Volkswagon themselves.
'Racial Superiority' was part of the Nazi's idealogical arsenal, however it was not and is not the chief defining characteristic any more than anti-Zionism is Communism's.
And Socialism has precious little to do with 'working cooperatively' and everything to do with wealth redistribution. I guess it depends on which side of the equation you're on, eh?
The opposite of progress is congress