Follow Up to the Michelle Obama Google Image Controversy

Last week Google made headlines when it refused to remove a racially offensive image of the First Lady of the United States. Although Google has a firm policy when it comes to removing sites from its search index, claiming they would only take down illegal content or pages that directly violate the company’s webmaster guidelines, the image was removed from Google Image search for the query “Michelle Obama”. The image still appears in Google image search for a more precise description.

Google, on its part has purchased sponsored listing ads explaining that it does not condone these images and that it apologizes if user’s feelings were hurt in the process of using Google. The same sponsored ads first appeared in 2004 when searching for the term “Jew” on Google image search turned up anti Semitic images. Google Spokesman, Scott Rubin said last Tuesday “Google has a bias for free speech “and that hate speech that would result in removal of a site has to attack or advocate attacks on a person in order to be considered as such.”An image alone may not provide enough context to constitute a violation of the policies," he added.

As an interesting experiment, and also our way of telling Mrs. Obama that things could be worse, we recommend doing a Google image search for “George Bush”. For those of us who do not have the connections the White House has when it comes to removing a negative image from Google Image search, we have assembled few suggestions on how to remove negative results from Google Images.

Comments

[Dish TV]

Anybody may criticize a person but when it turns to offense any race then it will be ridiculous.