Google apologises to Michelle Obama
Remember the Michelle Obama monkey image? Well, good luck finding it on Google now.
Google apologised over an offensive image of Michelle Obama with monkey features which had appeared when web users searched for pictures of the US first lady.
The digitally altered image had appeared as the top search result when the words "Michelle Obama" were put into the Google Images search engine, and was posted on a blog hosted by the Google-owned blog service, Blogger.
Google had refused to remove the image from its picture search listings, despite complaints that it was racist, instead opting to run an ad next to it explaining its policy on how search engine results work. In a statement in the advert, the company said its results "can include disturbing content, even from innocuous queries".
"We apologise if you've had an upsetting experience using Google," it said. "Google views the integrity of our search results as an extremely important priority. Accordingly, we do not remove a page from our search results simply because its content is unpopular or because we receive complaints concerning it."
A spokesman for Google said the blog and image might still appear in Google Images searches, but it was coming out of the search engine's indexing system. Google warned the image could easily reappear in its listings if another blog posted it. It is not the first time Google has published explanation ads against search queries.
But today the image no longer appears among the search results or on the blog. Instead, on the page that previously hosted the image, the blog's manager posted an apology in English, beneath Chinese text.
"I am very sorry for this article, andthat [sic] this is the program automatically issued a document from the article. Do not the subject of race and politics make the discussion too radical and sincere hope that the world is very peaceful," said the message, which is oddly dated Oct. 21, 2009.
Was the Michelle Obama monkey caricature racist? Should Google have to apologise for something it one of its users placed online?
- Reuters