href="http://api.tweetmeme.com/share?url=http://mashable.com/2010/01/28/google-islam/&service=bit.ly">
href="http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/islamis.jpg">When you begin to type “Islam is” into
href="http://mashable.com/social-media/google">Google’s search field,
href="http://thenextweb.com/us/2010/01/28/google-fixes-bug-allowing-profane-search-suggestions-islam/" target="_blank">it will now list suggestions based on searches that were popular with other users. Previously,
href="http://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/alfyk/google_removes_popular_negative_searches_related/" target="_blank">nothing came up for “Islam is” — but that wasn’t true when you typed in a different religion.
For example, suggested completions for “Christianity is” include “Christianity is not a religion” and “Christianity is a lie,” among others. Similar results come up when you type in other belief systems like Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Scientology and Atheism.
It seemed reasonable to speculate that Google was censoring the suggestions to avoid offending anyone with extremely harsh popular searches. Still,
href="http://thenextweb.com/2010/01/06/google-claims-bug-blocking-islamic-search-suggestions-fear/" target="_blank">Google told Search Engine Land that Islam wasn’t an intentional exception — that it was a bug engineers were working on fixing. It seems an unlikely coincidence, but Google has strongly resisted censoring results in the past. (It’s even
href="http://mashable.com/2010/01/12/google-china-attack/">threatened to pull out of China over the issue.)
For example, even though a search for the word “Jew” produces many anti-Semitic results, Google stuck to its algorithm, issuing an
href="http://www.google.com/explanation.html" target="_blank">explanation either at the top or the side of the results page. And two months ago, an uproar occurred when an offensive picture of U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama
href="http://mashable.com/2009/11/24/michelle-obama-image/"> appeared at the top of Google’s image results. Google issued an apology, but didn’t make changes to the results.
Either way, suggested completions for “Islam is” are now live, and they include both positive and negative phrases.
Reviews:
href="http://www.blippr.com/apps/336661-Google" target="_blank">Google
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href="http://mashable.com/tag/google/">Google,
href="http://mashable.com/tag/islam/">islam,
href="http://mashable.com/tag/search/">Search
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