Search engine behemoth Google is apologizing for image-search results delivered for first lady Michelle Obama that show the No. 1 image of her online to be a racist caricature.
"We apologize if you've had an upsetting experience using Google. We hope you understand our position regarding offensive results," says a house ad from "the Google team" served up in conjunction with image results for queries on the first lady's name.
"Search results are a reflection of the content on the web. Our search results simply reflect what's out there," Google spokesman Scott Rubin explained. "According to the way our algorithm works, when we try to deliver the most relevant search results based on other pages that link to it and so on, this is what is returned."
He said it was possible that the image ranked so high because people were linking to it to condemn it, but noted that there was no way for the company to know for sure. Page rank is the result of "more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms," according to Google."Because the image is offensive to many, we felt it was important to explain to our users why an image like that would appear," Rubin said.
The racist image was previously removed by Google in response to a complaint by Search Engine Roundtable, which objected that "If you conduct a search in Google Images for [Michelle Obama] you will see a racist image in the number one result."
But the image wasn't removed for being racist -- it was taken down because the site hosting it was also serving malware to user's computers, Rubin said. The image has since been reloaded onto another site that is not serving malware and under Google policy will remain there unless there is a further policy violation.
The Google team uses the house ad to hold the image at arm's length. "Sometimes Google search results from the Internet can include disturbing content, even from innocuous queries. We assure you that the views expressed by such sites are not in any way endorsed by Google," it says.
"A site's ranking in Google's search results relies heavily on computer algorithms using thousands of factors to calculate a page's relevance to a given query," the statement goes on to say. "The beliefs and preferences of those who work at Google, as well as the opinions of the general public, do not determine or impact our search results."
The company also used the house ad to clarify its policies on removing offensive content: "We do not remove a page from our search results simply because its content is unpopular or because we receive complaints concerning it. We will, however, remove pages from our results if we believe the page (or its site) violates our Webmaster Guidelines, if we believe we are required to do so by law, or at the request of the webmaster who is responsible for the page."
Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2009/11/24/BL2009112402424.html
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