Google apologizes for offensive image of first lady

By Garance Franke-Ruta
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.

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so the number 1 result of google image searches for the first lady was a hideously racist caricature.

Man, I find that depressing. And scary.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2009/11/google-takes-out-ad-to-explain.html?wprss=44

If so, that might be the reason...:shrug:

there are a lot of people who have now heard about this and want to see just what the a**hole republicans out there have done. I think we should do one of Palin at the witch of North and a big old broomstick. Then lets see how fast google drops it....After all they turned republican after they now have the monopoly search engine.