Google: A Racist Search Engine or are the People Who Use It

Most of you are probably very familiar with the Google Suggest feature that essentially finishes your phrase as you type into the search box. A drop menu appears with several other suggestions of what you might be searching for. It can be very helpful in refining your search and saving you the time of typing out a whole phrase. It almost finishes your thought for you.

Here's a quick tid bit of how it works from Google

As you type, Google Suggest communicates with Google and comes back with the suggestions we show. If you're signed in to your Google Account and have Web History enabled, suggestions are drawn from searches you've done, searches done by users all over the world, sites in our search index, and ads in our advertising network....

And...

We try to filter out suggestions that include pornographic terms, dirty words, and hate and violence terms.

Anyone ever notice though, what comes up when you type a question that starts with "Why do..." followed by the race of a person?

Some rather interesting search suggestions indeed, here are a few examples...

***WARNING: GRAPHIC AND OFFENSIVE LANGUAGE***


When you enter "Why do black...", you get:

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/602975a4687e.png[/atsimg]

Or "why do chinese..." :

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/0f4c2e949d6f.png[/atsimg]

Or perhaps you'd like to know more about Koreans:

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/50921130dfcc.png[/atsimg]

Curious about Mexicans? :

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/32151a6017df.png[/atsimg]


These are just few examples of how Google makes some rather questionable suggestions and it certainly left me scratching my head.... And while these results may not necessarily be considered violently racist they can certainly be classified as offensive and stereotypical to say the least.

And what if it's a young kid doing research for a school project on African Americans, and they use Google to type in a search only to get this result:

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/f2f9c3c0533a.png[/atsimg]

So is it Google or the people who use its search function that are the racists here?

I mean how many times does a particular search phrase have to be typed in to Google for it to become a Google Suggestion? Are that many people typing these sorts of phrases into Google? It'd be another sad commentary on the human condition if that's the case...

Certainly there are other search phrases being typed in about certain ethnic groups which would come up as Google suggestions rather than the racist ones, right?

Is Google promoting racism by allowing these suggestions to be made?



EDIT TO CHANGE TITLE

I added the bit ("or are the people who use it") at the end of the title because this thread was intended to explore not only Google, by allowing these sorts of suggestions, but also the users who actually type them in...

[edit on 17-4-2010 by PhotonEffect]

Obviously its people using the engin. Something that has been searched many times will pop up as an option.

Nothing special mate

You do know that suggestions are primarily based on the most used google terms right?

So if you see what you see when you type that in, that means the first suggestion is the MOST often searched keyword in that specific sentence format.

Just a thought.

~Keeper

I don't see how Google could be panned for offering these search suggestions ?? They are, after all, the result of and based on searches already made by other people...

So if anything, it is the people that searched your initial term or phrase that are racist if anyone...

However, I'd suggest their filter that tries "to filter out suggestions that include pornographic terms, dirty words, and hate and violence terms." might need just a little tweaking...

this is silly, google is not racist, it seem to hate everyone equaly!!!

did you try typing "why do whi ...." i just did, and comes up with the same sort of stuff.

google is verging on alive, these things that come up will be the most searched for similar terms... thats not google thats racist, its the people using it!

google is just a computer program, maybe a little bit alive, but just a program, with no emotions... with no emotions how can it hate anyone to actualy be racist?

It's a mirror of our global conciousness all intigrated in one search bar, you can see how far in the evolution we are and as you can see its not very far.

primitive humans are primitive

I believe you need to find a google search for an ethnic group that returns positive results before developing a conspiracy. I notice you conveniently left off white people...I typed in the same search words, only for white people...and the results were similar. It's not racist if it treats all groups in a similar fashion. At best, you could call them equal opportunity offenders...however, it's not google, it's the users of google, as they only list the most commonly searched terms.

posted in wrong thread

[edit on 17-4-2010 by InvisibleAlbatross]

Yes equally racist. So that's good.

The people using Google can be considered racist for typing such things, but Google has not done its part in filtering these terms out. There is not one useful phrase in any of those search suggestions.. they're all racist in nature

If you're not convince google is run by racists go to a Youtube partner meeting (if you're a partner). You'll see exactly what kind of people these are.

Its not google its the most common searches made. So its the fault of the collective searchers.

Having said that some of you need to toughen up. I mean comeon if you don't want to see this sort of stuff then don't use google. Searches such as "why do black people smell" are mildly offensive but nothing more. Bing does the same thing by the way.

Most americans think that god created the world 6,000 years ago.

I have googled some of those questions myself, like the eyes question for asians. People are curious about what they don't know and more and more people are using search engines like a person, especially young kids. There were a ton of commercials a few years ago for ASK.com and they made it OK to ask questions in search engines.

There is nothing racist going on, i am a web designer, Search Engine Optimizer and have been to many web conferences. Google just knows what people are going to search cause they have millions of searches everyday.

Originally posted by BeastMaster2012
Most americans think that god created the world 6,000 years ago.

I have googled some of those questions myself, like the eyes question for asians. People are curious about what they don't know and more and more people are using search engines like a person, especially young kids. There were a ton of commercials a few years ago for ASK.com and they made it OK to ask questions in search engines.

There is nothing racist going on, i am a web designer, Search Engine Optimizer and have been to many web conferences. Google just knows what people are going to search cause they have millions of searches everyday.

It's more like over a billion searches a day. They go though the millions in around a minute.

I have a friend that says racism is dead. He listens to country music and trucker radio stations. This is good proof of how racism is not dead, My dad is one of the biggest recasts I have ever known, just because people are much quieter about it don't mean it's dead!. When I go to party's with all white people, the jokes start coming out about every other race.

For the record I'm not white, I look white but I'm not and I hear and see racism all the time, It makes me sick and white people seam to use it as a test somehow? I don't get it.

Originally posted by godfish
I have a friend that says racism is dead. He listens to country music and trucker radio stations. This is good proof of how racism is not dead...

So listening to country music makes one racist? How so?

Stereotype much?

reply to post by Aggie Man


That's not even CLOSE to what he said, maybe you should read his posts before responding to it in such a ridiculous manner, you only make yourself look foolish.

Originally posted by KyleOrtonArmy
reply to post by Aggie Man

 

That's not even CLOSE to what he said, maybe you should read his posts before responding to it in such a ridiculous manner, you only make yourself look foolish.

Not even close? It's a direct quote!

If that is not what he meant, then he should clarify better, as that is how I read it.

Why mention country music and trucker radio stations then? What bearing does that have on the rest of his comment, if not to slam it as racist?

No need for you to reply to this, as you can't speak for him.

Oh get real.

Type in "Why do white people"...

Best one is "love Wayne Brady". HAHAHAH (I love Dave Chappelle, which instills some more inside humor).

Almost all of the stereotypes/facts that pop up doing those searches are joked and talked about a lot.

Many of the questions suggested are not only relevant, but true.

Just because it makes you uncomfortable does not mean it is racist.

By any chance PhotonEffect, are you running for a political office?

reply to post by godfish


Racism is the judgments of the uninformed, or ignorant.

Does it surprise you that MOST racist are intellectually challenged compared to most people?

Not only that, but we have racist movements still present in the generations of this country.

Top on to all of that segregated poverties and you have a bigger formula for racism.

Many people do it to fit in or feel powerful.

Just leave the comedians out of it

Originally posted by PhotonEffect
Most of you are probably very familiar with the Google Suggest feature that essentially finishes your phrase as you type into the search box. A drop menu appears with several other suggestions of what you might be searching for. It can be very helpful in refining your search and saving you the time of typing out a whole phrase. It almost finishes your thought for you.

Here's a quick tid bit of how it works from Google

As you type, Google Suggest communicates with Google and comes back with the suggestions we show. If you're signed in to your Google Account and have Web History enabled, suggestions are drawn from searches you've done, searches done by users all over the world, sites in our search index, and ads in our advertising network....

And...

We try to filter out suggestions that include pornographic terms, dirty words, and hate and violence terms.

Anyone ever notice though, what comes up when you type a question that starts with "Why do..." followed by the race of a person?

Some rather interesting search suggestions indeed, here are a few examples...

***WARNING: GRAPHIC AND OFFENSIVE LANGUAGE***


When you enter "Why do black...", you get:

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/602975a4687e.png[/atsimg]

Or "why do chinese..." :

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/0f4c2e949d6f.png[/atsimg]

Or perhaps you'd like to know more about Koreans:

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/50921130dfcc.png[/atsimg]

Curious about Mexicans? :

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/32151a6017df.png[/atsimg]


These are just few examples of how Google makes some rather questionable suggestions and it certainly left me scratching my head.... And while these results may not necessarily be considered violently racist they can certainly be classified as offensive and stereotypical to say the least.

And what if it's a young kid doing research for a school project on African Americans, and they use Google to type in a search only to get this result:

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/f2f9c3c0533a.png[/atsimg]

So is it Google or the people who use its search function that are the racists here?

I mean how many times does a particular search phrase have to be typed in to Google for it to become a Google Suggestion? Are that many people typing these sorts of phrases into Google? It'd be another sad commentary on the human condition if that's the case...

Certainly there are other search phrases being typed in about certain ethnic groups which would come up as Google suggestions rather than the racist ones, right?

Is Google promoting racism by allowing these suggestions to be made?



EDIT TO CHANGE TITLE

I added the bit ("or are the people who use it") at the end of the title because this thread was intended to explore not only Google, by allowing these sorts of suggestions, but also the users who actually type them in...

[edit on 17-4-2010 by PhotonEffect]

Put in why do white men and see what goes up. Its still negative.