Google Sheilds Islam From Controversy
A strange debate is taking place around one of Google's older, core features, Google Search Suggest, and whether it intentionally treats Islam differently than it does other religions.
This Google search feature works by presenting a list of popular terms as soon as a user types in a letter in the Google search field. For instance, typing in the letter "a" will produce a drop-down list of terms including "amazon" and "autotrader." The suggestions increase in specificity the more letters and words a user types.
Bloggers recently discovered that when they typed in the phrase "Islam is," Google provided no suggestions. This was in contrast to corresponding phrases involving the other world religions -- Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism and Hinduism as well as atheism -- which each produced a full list of terms, including many disparaging, bigoted and anti-religious suggestions.
The omission of any suggestions related to "Islam is" was thus interpreted by some to be a sign that Google was practicing religious favoritism of a sort.
"So why is Google blocking the search recommendations?" Blair Scott asked at Athiests.org. "Are they afraid of offending Muslims who will likely retaliate against Google? Or is it, as one person suggested on Facebook, an attempt by Google to simply ignore Islam?"
Google responded to the charges within hours, denying the omission was intentional, and instead blaming it on a "bug ... blocking search suggestions related to Islam," which the company said was in the process of being fixed ASAP. As of Thursday morning, the omission remained.
When Google officially introduced search suggest in August 2008, product manager Jennifer Liu wrote that it was designed to "simplify" and "help people search more efficiently and conveniently."
Yet almost immediately after it was released as a beta-feature in 2004, users began finding odd, amusing, disturbing quirks in the terms that Google was suggesting.
Google Suggest has since been accused of being racist, libelous, anti-American and sexually deviant. Slate.com even held a contest in November, inviting readers to uncover the most bizarrely contrasting suggestions. The winner: "Is it wrong to?" which produces "sleep with your cousin" as a suggested search term.
As always, these suggestions have been tempered by the realization that the recommendations are based fundamentally on the popularity of specific search results. Terms that produce the most search results pages are those that appear in the list of suggestions.
Furthermore, Google enhanced its search suggest in early 2009 by personalizing it -- tailoring the terms displayed to every user's search history and allowing users to delete unwanted terms. In the same update, Google began inserting ads in particular suggestion lists.
It should be noted that the company has a history of complying with requests to remove legally debatable and patently offensive content from its results pages (a separate feature) such as the listings for file-swapping Web site the Pirate Bay and racist images of Michelle Obama. It also inexplicably dropped an Arkansas Christian church from the list of search results in 2008 only to restore it after the adherents complained.
This Google search feature works by presenting a list of popular terms as soon as a user types in a letter in the Google search field. For instance, typing in the letter "a" will produce a drop-down list of terms including "amazon" and "autotrader." The suggestions increase in specificity the more letters and words a user types.
Bloggers recently discovered that when they typed in the phrase "Islam is," Google provided no suggestions. This was in contrast to corresponding phrases involving the other world religions -- Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism and Hinduism as well as atheism -- which each produced a full list of terms, including many disparaging, bigoted and anti-religious suggestions.
The omission of any suggestions related to "Islam is" was thus interpreted by some to be a sign that Google was practicing religious favoritism of a sort.
"So why is Google blocking the search recommendations?" Blair Scott asked at Athiests.org. "Are they afraid of offending Muslims who will likely retaliate against Google? Or is it, as one person suggested on Facebook, an attempt by Google to simply ignore Islam?"
Google responded to the charges within hours, denying the omission was intentional, and instead blaming it on a "bug ... blocking search suggestions related to Islam," which the company said was in the process of being fixed ASAP. As of Thursday morning, the omission remained.
When Google officially introduced search suggest in August 2008, product manager Jennifer Liu wrote that it was designed to "simplify" and "help people search more efficiently and conveniently."
Yet almost immediately after it was released as a beta-feature in 2004, users began finding odd, amusing, disturbing quirks in the terms that Google was suggesting.
Google Suggest has since been accused of being racist, libelous, anti-American and sexually deviant. Slate.com even held a contest in November, inviting readers to uncover the most bizarrely contrasting suggestions. The winner: "Is it wrong to?" which produces "sleep with your cousin" as a suggested search term.
As always, these suggestions have been tempered by the realization that the recommendations are based fundamentally on the popularity of specific search results. Terms that produce the most search results pages are those that appear in the list of suggestions.
Furthermore, Google enhanced its search suggest in early 2009 by personalizing it -- tailoring the terms displayed to every user's search history and allowing users to delete unwanted terms. In the same update, Google began inserting ads in particular suggestion lists.
It should be noted that the company has a history of complying with requests to remove legally debatable and patently offensive content from its results pages (a separate feature) such as the listings for file-swapping Web site the Pirate Bay and racist images of Michelle Obama. It also inexplicably dropped an Arkansas Christian church from the list of search results in 2008 only to restore it after the adherents complained.
posted by chickcomics | 8:51 AM
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