GOOGLE Says No to Remove Offensive Obama Photo
GOOGLE is being forced to apologize for a racist altered photo of US first lady, Michelle Obama, which appeared on the top hits for their images lists. In spite of hundreds of consumer complaints from all over the globe, the widely used internet search engine has refused to remove the unsightly photo, insisting that they will not remove content simply for being offensive.
The image shows Michelle Obama after her face has been doctored to resemble a character from Planet of the Apes. The majority of yesterday the image remained at the forefront of GOOGLE’s images search tool, and appeared first when Ms. Obama’s name was typed into the search engine.
Although they refused to remove the image, the search engine company did, however, post a disclaimer admitting that sometimes their content was offensive and that they agreed it was offensive. Users who clicked the disclaimer were then redirected to a statement by the company stating their policy for disturbing content.
GOOGLE than added that they wanted to let their customers rest assured that they do not endorse any of the results from their search engine, and that sometimes those search results can be offensive, disturbing, and unsightly.
The photo has caused outrage among many Obama supporters and GOOGLE’s online forums and chats have erupted in a flury of comments of outrage and disappointment at the photo. A spokesperson for the GOOGLE UK branch said that, clearly it is not a nice image but that it is not illegal so the website will not remove the content, as GOOGLE does not filter their content based merely on it being of an offensive nature.
Comments
Got something to say?