Chicago Tribune

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‘Offensive’ Photoshopped Photo (Left) /not photoshopped photo (right)

In an effort to explain why an offensive image of First Lady Michelle Obama is ranked so highly in its Image search results, Google has purchased online ad. The picture, which appears on Google Image Search, shows the photo of a monkey superimposed over the face of the First Lady.

As Search Engine Land reported last week, Google had removed the Obama image saying that the site hosting the image violated Google’s guidelines by serving malware to visitors. But the same image remained available on other sites.

The Google ad says this:

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.

Search engines are a reflection of the content and information that is available on the Internet. 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 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. Individual citizens and public interest groups do periodically urge us to remove particular links or otherwise adjust search results. Although Google reserves the right to address such requests individually, 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. 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.

We apologize if you’ve had an upsetting experience using Google. We hope you understand our position regarding offensive results.
Sincerely,
The Google Team

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Of course Google never issued the same apology when George Bush was portrayed as a chimp a thousand times on their search engine.

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