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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.
You're ridiculous.
The administration wouldn't have to lift a finger to get Google to remove this - market pressures would. Someone finds a race-baiting image of the First Lady is a top result on Google and sends word to everyone in their address book about it, and those people spread it, and so on. At some point you'd have tons of people contacting Google to demand that it be remedied, and Google would do it rather than suffer a pretty serious PR black eye.
Why would the Obama administration bother swinging at a pitch in the dirt like this? People have been shown at protests with signs that insult the man's *children* by calling them all kinds of racist names, and he doesn't bother responding to it, but you think that a stupid caricature of his wife is somehow going to get him to say "Hey, I think I'll take an action that, if found out, would completely ruin my credibility and won't have any impact because the image will still be out there. That's a winning move!"
It looks like you're a paranoid kook who doesn't have any clue how the real world actually works. The fact that some other mong modded you "insightful" should be frightening to people who actually have a functioning brain.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
Come on.. this is the just the Zeitgeist. There are more people searching for the picture in question rather than just her name. That would put the suggestion higher in the list (I'm guessing that's how the autocomplete algorithm works).
Google isn't really to blame.. and them removing this item can be seen as censorship.
http://dilemma.gulecha.org - My philospohical short film.
I just did a Google vs Bing comparison on image search for michelle+obama+monkey.
First comment: the images were displayed really slowly on Bing; many never appeared at all.
Second comment: of the images displayed, Google's had more with a monkey theme of some sort.
Third comment: neither search produced anything I'd refer to as offensive.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
And the constitution is entirely about democracy
Really? Show me where the word is mentioned. I'm sure it must be in there somewhere.
Progressivism: Parasites helping parasites to help themselves - to other people's stuff.
We've heard the argument before: "we are just a search engine, we arent responsible for child porn, warez, illegal mp3s or anythign like that that show up in our results"... unless its a picture of Michelle Obama... If you can flush that you have proved you can flush the other things as well. So whats next?
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
And yet we've gone from it being publicly acceptable to put blacks in the back of a bus and make them drink from a different water fountain, to an African American president.
They essentially made overt racism illegal, at least in public.