GOOGLING JEW, CHRISTIAN, MUSLIM

They've even noticed the controversy in India. Until the other day if you typed the word "Jew" into Google, the first search result turned out to be a link to an anti-Semitic Web site. A group called removejewwatch wants the site removed from the Google search engine and is asking at least 50,000 people to sign a petition demanding that.

Google has taken note as well. Now if you type in "Jew," you get a Google explanation called Offensive Search Results. It says the Google Team is also "disturbed" by the result, and it apologizes for "the upsetting nature of the experience you had" if you had done the search.

But it also says the automated system for ranking sites, which determines the order of the listings, is "completely objective." Further, it points out, "the only sites we omit are those we are legally compelled to remove or those maliciously attempting to manipulate our result." And in any case, it says, Google "cannot be influenced" by petitions. So the anti-Semitic Web site remains a top search result.

If you type in "Christian" the top site you get is for the newspaper The Christian Science Monitor, immediately followed by a pro-Christian Web site. If you type in "Muslim" the top site listed is a pro-Muslim site under construction that is partnered with a religious Muslim educational site.

Question: Is the issue a matter of free speech vs. hate speech, as one petitioner says? Seems to me Google has done the correct thing. If anyone can make the case in court to remove the offensive anti-Semitic site from the search engine, that would be the way to go. Google already says it's willing to comply. Barring that, free speech should rule. What do you think?

April 14, 2004 3:57 AM |

Categories:

Me Elsewhere

'WILD SIDE' STILL ROCKS 

Nelson Algren was one of the great American authors of the 20th century, it is no exaggeration to say, and among the most neglected. Consider his underrated classic, "A Walk on the Wild Side." The title -- popularized and co-opted as an idiomatic phrase by Hollywood and Madison Avenue (institutions Algren loathed) -- is familiar to most anyone who speaks English or knows Lou Reed's lyrics. But the novel itself? Hardly.

BUSTER KEATON REVISITED 
Buster Keaton: Tempest in a Flat Hat is not a biography. "This book is merely a fan's notes," Edward McPherson writes in the introduction, although his publisher ignores the disclaimer and calls it a biography on the cover. In fact, the book is a bit of both, a difficult combination to bring off unless you're David Thomson, who set the standard with Rosebud, his penetrating rumination on the life and career of Orson Welles, which was nothing if not a distillation of every obsessive thought he ever had about the myth and the man and all his movies.
LAUREN BACALL, STILL SALTY AT 80 
When Lauren Bacall writes that her singing voice ranges "somewhere between B minus sharp and outer space," she's being candid and funny. It's not every stage star with two Tony Awards for best actress in a musical whose vocal talent offers so little promise. (OK, Harvey Fierstein excepted.) Still less would one admit it.
THE STARS ACCORDING TO BOGDANOVICH 
Peter Bogdanovich's superb collection of movie-star profiles and interviews -- a sequel to Who the Devil Made It, his interviews of top film directors -- begins with an affectionate tale about Orson Welles that reminds us just how intimate the author's connection to Hollywood's greatest has been. But contrary to what we've come to expect from dime-a-dozen celebrities and celebrity interviews not worth two cents, the tale avoids bromidic egotism and journalistic platitudes.
SAMMY'S WHITE DREAMS 
Four decades ago Lenny Bruce sentenced Sammy Davis Jr. to "30 years in Biloxi," stripping him of "his Jewish star" and "his religious statue of Elizabeth Taylor." Now we have two new biographies of Davis that spring him from ridicule, if not from doubts about his legacy, and restore a measure of dignity to a black entertainer whose huge fame and success never overcame his devout wish -- indeed his lifelong effort -- to be white.
more picks

Sites to See

About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by CriticalMASS published on April 14, 2004 3:57 AM.

THE USUAL TAP DANCE was the previous entry in this blog.

TO DO BEFORE YOU DIE is the next entry in this blog.

Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.

Creative Commons License
This weblog is licensed under a Creative Commons License.