Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself. –Salman Rushdie
There has been an uproar online this week over aracist cartoon of Michelle Obama depicted as a monkey. The imageoriginally appeared on an obscure Chinese blog called “Hot Girls,” butcatapulted to prominence when it turned out that it was also the firsthit for “Michelle Obama” on Google Images.
As you might expect, there were a rush of calls forGoogle to remove the offensive image, but the search giant refused.(Don’t run to your computer to look for it now – you won’t find itthere anymore; but not because Google capitulated, the Chinese blogtook it off.).
Google is aware that it is on an extremely slippery slope here.Give in to one pressure group and every other one will be clamoring forthe search engine to get rid of any picture or article that offendssomeone’s sensibilities. The world’s most popular site simply mirrorsthe information available on the Web, tabulating all of it according toa complex set of algorithms. If it was to start judging thatinformation, it would lose all relevance. The only exception is whenGoogle is forced to remove links for legal considerations.