Jerry Abbott
May 17th, 2008, 07:25 AM
I just now did a web search on the following terms:
"strong enough" "the Jew" "believe or see"
I was looking for the part of Mein Kampf where Hitler describes the way the Jews come out of the shadows once they feel confident in their political strength. In the search results page, there were no links provided. But there was a message:
Offensive Search Results (http://www.google.com/explanation)
www.google.com/explanation
We're disturbed about these results as well. Please read our note here.
An explanation of our search results.
If you recently used Google to search for the word "Jew," you may have seen results that were very disturbing. We assure you that the views expressed by the sites in your results are not in any way endorsed by Google. We'd like to explain why you're seeing these results when you conduct this search.
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. Sometimes subtleties of language cause anomalies to appear that cannot be predicted. A search for "Jew" brings up one such unexpected result.
If you use Google to search for "Judaism," "Jewish" or "Jewish people," the results are informative and relevant. So why is a search for "Jew" different? One reason is that the word "Jew" is often used in an anti-Semitic context. Jewish organizations are more likely to use the word "Jewish" when talking about members of their faith. The word has become somewhat charged linguistically, as noted on websites devoted to Jewish topics such as these:
* http://shakti.trincoll.edu/~mendele/vol01/vol01.174
* http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/jonah081500.asp
Someone searching for information on Jewish people would be more likely to enter terms like "Judaism," "Jewish people," or "Jews" than the single word "Jew." In fact, prior to this incident, the word "Jew" only appeared about once in every 10 million search queries. Now it's likely that the great majority of searches on Google for "Jew" are by people who have heard about this issue and want to see the results for themselves.
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 comprehensiveness 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 for the upsetting nature of the experience you had using Google and appreciate your taking the time to inform us about it.
Sincerely,
The Google Team
p.s. You may be interested in some additional information the Anti-Defamation League has posted about this issue at http://www.adl.org/rumors/google_search_rumors.asp. In addition, we call your attention to Google's search results (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=anti-semitism) on this topic.
If you click on the "search results" link, you will be shown the results for a Google search on the term "anti-Semitism," not for the terms that I'd entered into the search input window.
The sheer presumption of "the Google Team" in hiding relevant and important information that others have offered to the web, and then offering Jewish propaganda as a substitute for that information, seems... well, Jewish! That "one such unexpected result" might have been the very thing that I was looking for. Even if it wasn't, it would have been no particular inconvenience to skip it as I was looking down a normal list of page results, and anyway nearly every web search gives a few results that aren't related to the matter of interest. The flimsy excuses offered by Google aren't fooling me. They have changed their system to hide information about the Jews that the Jews don't want to be available to the public.
Jerry Abbott
"strong enough" "the Jew" "believe or see"
I was looking for the part of Mein Kampf where Hitler describes the way the Jews come out of the shadows once they feel confident in their political strength. In the search results page, there were no links provided. But there was a message:
Offensive Search Results (http://www.google.com/explanation)
www.google.com/explanation
We're disturbed about these results as well. Please read our note here.
An explanation of our search results.
If you recently used Google to search for the word "Jew," you may have seen results that were very disturbing. We assure you that the views expressed by the sites in your results are not in any way endorsed by Google. We'd like to explain why you're seeing these results when you conduct this search.
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. Sometimes subtleties of language cause anomalies to appear that cannot be predicted. A search for "Jew" brings up one such unexpected result.
If you use Google to search for "Judaism," "Jewish" or "Jewish people," the results are informative and relevant. So why is a search for "Jew" different? One reason is that the word "Jew" is often used in an anti-Semitic context. Jewish organizations are more likely to use the word "Jewish" when talking about members of their faith. The word has become somewhat charged linguistically, as noted on websites devoted to Jewish topics such as these:
* http://shakti.trincoll.edu/~mendele/vol01/vol01.174
* http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/jonah081500.asp
Someone searching for information on Jewish people would be more likely to enter terms like "Judaism," "Jewish people," or "Jews" than the single word "Jew." In fact, prior to this incident, the word "Jew" only appeared about once in every 10 million search queries. Now it's likely that the great majority of searches on Google for "Jew" are by people who have heard about this issue and want to see the results for themselves.
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 comprehensiveness 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 for the upsetting nature of the experience you had using Google and appreciate your taking the time to inform us about it.
Sincerely,
The Google Team
p.s. You may be interested in some additional information the Anti-Defamation League has posted about this issue at http://www.adl.org/rumors/google_search_rumors.asp. In addition, we call your attention to Google's search results (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=anti-semitism) on this topic.
If you click on the "search results" link, you will be shown the results for a Google search on the term "anti-Semitism," not for the terms that I'd entered into the search input window.
The sheer presumption of "the Google Team" in hiding relevant and important information that others have offered to the web, and then offering Jewish propaganda as a substitute for that information, seems... well, Jewish! That "one such unexpected result" might have been the very thing that I was looking for. Even if it wasn't, it would have been no particular inconvenience to skip it as I was looking down a normal list of page results, and anyway nearly every web search gives a few results that aren't related to the matter of interest. The flimsy excuses offered by Google aren't fooling me. They have changed their system to hide information about the Jews that the Jews don't want to be available to the public.
Jerry Abbott