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Google Apologizes For "Michelle Obama" Results
theodp writes "CNN reports that for most of the past week, when someone did a Google image search for 'Michelle Obama,' one of the first images that came up was a picture of the First Lady altered to resemble a monkey. After being hit with a firestorm of criticism over the episode, Google first banned the site that posted the photo, saying it could spread malware. Then, when the image appeared on another site, Google displayed the photo in its search results, but displayed an apologetic Google ad above it. On Wednesday morning, the racially offensive image appeared to have been removed from any Google Image searches for 'Michelle Obama.' Google officials could not immediately be reached for comment."
Update — 15:38 GMT by SS: A reader pointed out that this article from the Guardian says the image was de-listed simply because it was removed from the blog where it was hosted rather than by any "deliberate" action from Google.
At the moment it suggests searching for "Michelle Obama monkey" when you search for "Michelle Obama"
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... that Google is now being held accountable to what is available on the internet. That should take them down a peg or two.
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Well, if you know anything about this history of racism in America, it was quite common to refer to blacks as monkeys, apes, chimps, ect. in the past.
The whole racism thing is played WAY TO FUCKING MUCH now days, but you have to be completely ignorant of history in the US to not at least see how it could be viewed as a racial attack.
If you're not American I can understand, if you are American then you're either 12, have lived in a box for all your life, or have experienced so much censorship in your life that you've never heard of it before, which is equally as sad.
Never heard the phrase 'Porch Monkey' even?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6OselVRTsM ... but more on topic for the ignorant
Great scene
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=Porch+Monkey&aq=f&oq=&aqi=g10
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Looks like they did. Searching with SafeSearch off, 'michelle obama' returns relatively normal stuff, 'michelle obama monkey' shows it as the second result, and with moderate SafeSearch, 'michelle obama ape', the query _linked from the cnn article_, shows it as the first result, so it's definitely still there on Google.
The original blogger took it down. The first mirror that shot it right back in to 1st place took it down, and then it left google's page rank caching for the 'Michelle Obama' query. Are we actually sure that Google did ANYTHING here? They might have marked the image offensive, which would [I assume, I know nothing of google's search results rankings] hide it from people with strict safesearch on, and severely downrank it on moderate and no safesearch results.
Are we actually sure that Google did ANYTHING here? They might have marked the image offensive, which would [I assume, I know nothing of google's search results rankings] hide it from people with strict safesearch on, and severely downrank it on moderate and no safesearch results.
Good point. Deserves a point or two from anybody slinging them around, AC or not.
"Common sense will be the death of us all"
African-Americans have voted in a much larger percentage for the Democratic party since the civil rights era. That whole time they were voting for white politicians.
Frankly, your entire premise here is ignorant bullshit. Going by your logic every white person is a racist, if they've only voted for white politicians like John Sidney McCain.
You mean other than the fact that Google said they were contacted by the administration? It's on the "apology" page.. which is more like a "no actually, you can't sue us" information page.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Do not imagine for a second that the people who create images of Michelle Obama that make her look more monkey like are doing it simply because they noticed the striking similarity between humans and monkeys. They are doing it because they are racists.
They are doing it because they are racists? It appears the photo came from celebrityapes.com, and they did this same treatment to a number of famous people. http://www.somethingawful.com/d/awful-links/celebrity-apes.php
I suppose it was racism that drove them to turn the photo of Sara Palin into an ape, right? Yep...those fucking racists, always using derogatory terms like "monkey" whenever they see a white person.
You did get one thing right....racism is still alive in this country/world, and unfortunately it will always be there, especially when people like you are right there to jump on the bandwagon and cry "racism" before you've even seen what has really happened. Good job stirring the pot up for no good reason.