Google and the Michelle Obama Monkey Picture
Google announced today that they would not remove a racist image of Michelle Obama from their image search page, where it was showing up as the first result: Google won’t exclude distorted Michelle Obama image from its site.
But the blog that posted the image has now removed it themselves: Blog Removes Offensive First Lady Image That Topped Google.
An offensive image of first lady Michelle Obama that had topped Google Image search results appears to have been removed.
The image of President Obama’s wife, which had been ostensibly photo-edited to resemble a monkey, was hosted by a blog called “Hot Girls.”
When Google users typed “Michelle Obama” into the search box, depending on their Web browsers’ settings, the first image to surface in Google Image’s search engine could have been the offensive image.
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.
Frank says: