Google apologizes for offensive first lady image
Google Inc. on Tuesday apologized for a racially offensive image of the First Lady that appears at the top of the list when users search for pictures of Michelle Obama on the world’s largest search engine.
Apologizing for the offensive image, Google Inc. has now placed a text ad above the image titled “Offensive Search Results”. It also states that, “Sometimes our search results can be offensive. We agree.”
Clicking on the act, the user is redirected to a letter from Google that explains that the results at the site can sometimes include disturbing content. It however added that Google doesn’t endorse content on these websites.
The Mountain View based company wrote in a statement that, “We apologize if you’ve had an upsetting experience using Google.”
This is not the first time Google has apologized for content in its search results. The company issued a similar response in 2004 when the top result for the term “Jew” pointed to an anti-Semitic Web site.
Google puts songs a click away in search
Here’s something new from Google, this time for all you music lovers out there!
A new music feature rolled out by Google Inc. on Wednesday will now offer the U.S. searchers music, full length song, on just one click!
This new feature from the Mountain view, California based company brings up to four top songs from the search results. Once you selected a song, it’ll be played on pop-up music players from MySpace or Lala. The search results are also accompanied by album art and links to music sites Pandora, imeem and Rhapsody. Internet users can search by artist name, album or song title and can even access a song by typing in part of its lyrics.
R.J. Pittman, Google’s director of product management says, “Within that mission of trying to make music search easier is to keep it simple, exercising great restraint in the design of this is what’s going to maximize its adoption.”
This will next also give you an option to buy song downloads from Amazon.com Inc. or Apple Inc.’s iTunes.
WOWD, the real-time search engine
With an aim to be identified as the Skype for search, the beta version of WOWD, the Internet’s newest search engine, was launched last week at the 2009 Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco.
WOWD aims to distinguish itself from the popular mainstream search engines like Google and Yahoo! by identifying the most popular sites in real-time and hence wooing the internet search audience.
WOWD is a deliberate play on the word Crowd as it aims to differ from the rest by focusing on new trends, news, and popular topics and pages on the Internet.
In a method little similar to Digg, the internet users download WOWD browser application, and then every page visited by them is nominated for inclusion on the search engine’s results page.
The WOWD browser application is available for the Mac, Windows, and Linux.
The home page of WOWD offers three different tabs, Hot List, Search, and My Pages. The Hot List is available to everyone and results by popularity. Results are constantly updated giving you an update on the sites being visited by other users.
Microsoft makes gains with Bing
Going by the market figures of the last week, Google’s arch rival, Microsoft’s newly launched search engine Bing won more market share according to the data released on Wednesday. However, the new kid on the block is still miles way from Google Inc and Yahoo Inc.
Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer labeled this as a good start for their company.
“We have had some very good initial response,” Ballmer said at a conference in Detroit. “I don’t want to over-set expectations. We are going to have to be tenacious and keep up the pace of innovation over a long period of time,” he added.
According to data released by industry tracker comScore on Wednesday, for the June 8-12 week, Microsoft grabbed 12.1 per cent of U.S. Internet searches. This accounts for a 11.3 per cent growth from the June 1-5 period, the week in which the new search engine was launched.
On the monthly basis, Google top scored with 64.2 per cent of U.S. searches in April, followed by Yahoo! with 20.4 per cent and then Microsoft with only 8.2 percent
Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft urged not to censor search
In an attempt to protest against Cyber Censorship, the rights groups on Friday called on Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft requesting not to censor their web search engines for the 12th of March, the World Day Against Cyber Censorship.
According to the letter sent to the search engine giants by Reporters Without Borders and Amnesty International, “World Day Against Cyber Censorship is a day to advance and celebrate a free Internet as an open window to the world and denounce the attacks made on the free flow of information online.”
They further added, “We urge you, on March 12th, to champion the vision of the Internet as a free space for everyone, regardless of nationality or geographic location, and fulfill the idea of a truly worldwide Web — even if just for one day.”
China has for long been exercising a strict control the Internet usage, blocking websites linked to Chinese dissidents, the outlawed Falun Gong spiritual movement, the Tibetan government-in-exile and the 1989 Tiananmen massacre.
In the recent years, many tech giants including Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft and Cisco, have been accused of involvement in building the “Great Firewall of China.”
Google has been severely criticized for acting in accordance with Chinese government’s policy to filter Internet searches.
Google sparks panic!!
“Warning! This site may harm your computer.”
Did you also get that message while attempting to search something in Google a few hours back?
A malfunction in the security program sparked a worldwide alarm temporarily preventing the users from visiting any of the sites listed in the Google’s search results.
For nearly an hour’s time, between 1430 and 1525 GMT, the search engine Google’s results flagged every result with the warning “This site may harm your computer!”
Google vice president for search products and user experience Marissa Mayer reported on the company’s official blog that the malfunctioning happened due to a human error. He also apologized for any inconvenience caused to users and site owners whose pages were incorrectly labeled.
Google’s malware warning system works in collaboration with StopBadware.org, who regularly updates Google about the websites which are believed to sneak malware and unwanted software onto visitors’ machines
The users who persisted trying to access the resulting site were blocked by Google and redirected to StopBadware.org. “This led to a denial of service of our website as millions of Google users attempted to visit our site for more information”, StopBadware.org said in a statement.
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