Bridge for sale! Google denies censoring "anti-Islam" search suggestions

Sure, and "the dog ate my homework" or "I swear honey, she's just a friend." or "Mafia?! There ain't no stinkin' Mafia. I'm just a businessman. 'What business?' Ummm - errm - - import/export - - to Scicily. Yeah, that's it."

And people wonder why Rupert Murdoch wants out of google...

Here's what will happen:

Either

1. Google does nothing, and this issue blows over soon (this is what Google is hoping for).

or

2. The issue does not blow over, and enough people start talking about it that Google is forced to do something. Google would prefer to do nothing at all, but if they have no choice they will modify the code to provide some non-offensive search suggestions for "islam is". Regardless, there is no way that Google will allow anything negative about islam to appear on their website.

So, if it just happened and cannot be fixed even by Google, it must be a miracle then, proving that Allah is greatest and Islam is dominant uber alles. It is just one of those Inshallah things that cannot be explained!

Bing returns some search suggestions, like: "Islam is evil". "Islam is of the devil", "Islam is a lie".

Nice. Even in case Google is telling the truth, this is good. The public outcry will prevent similar dirty tricks elsewhere.

Thanks, Robert :)

"Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?"

Complete nonsense. Forget the "islam is" for a minute. Try "jihad is". ALL POSITIVE. That is intentional muddling, not a "bug".

It's not a bug -- it's a feature!

The google "boys" are dhimmis. And google is being used to propogate the LIES Islam tells and teaches about its barbaric history and sociopathic founder, Mohammed.

I've used Copernic search engine for years. It gives 53 returns for "Islam is."

http://www.copernic.com/

BS

Google has become too big for its boots anyway.
Time for a boycott anyone?

This topic is the most serious example of Google non-neutrality but there are others. Google also censors search returns on the issue of (non)global warming. Here's a link:http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Web+Search/thread?tid=25112ee0c29cbd01&hl=en#all

Thanks for verifying its continued bias.

This topic is the most serious example of Google non-neutrality but there are others. Google also censors search returns on the issue of (non)global warming. Here's a link:http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Web+Search/thread?tid=25112ee0c29cbd01&hl=en#all

Thanks for verifying its continued bias.

This story was discussed extensively here a few days ago. My take is that it is no "bug" but rather deliberate censorship by Left-leaning Google. It was probably a single programmer within Google, some Leftist-"progressive" from the Bay area, who originally surreptitiously put the filter in place. But now that it has been made public Google management will have taken the matter under advisement and will have to make a decision about whether to let it stand or not.

My bet is that they'll let it slide, maybe even fix the problem and caution the programmer to be more careful about folding his political views into software in such a blatant and ham-handed manner, and count on the fuss to blow over. It would be good if someone from within Google, say some disgruntled employee (of which there must be many) could come forward with the real story.

This was discovered a week ago, and the problem remains. It doesn't take that long to fix a "bug" of this kind.

It's not the only evidence of political sentiment. One never seems to see any tributes (in the form of graphic flourishes) on Google's home page on US national holidays - Veterans or Memorial Day, for example. And the last time I was on Google Earth, they insisted the Golan Heights was "Syria". It hasn't been Syrian since the Six Day War of 1967.

Interesting test.I just did it with Bing search engine and it is more balanced.Never liked google because of all the crap they have tried to store on my system when i install software.

Interesting test.I just did it with Bing search engine and it is more balanced.Never liked google because of all the crap they have tried to store on my system when i install software.

GOOGLE has placed its itself in a position of looking like religious fanatics. Go figure.

Google is ...

* a dhimmi search engine

* technically incompetent

* scared s***less

Yeah, right, a "software glitch" that has persisted for who-knows-how-long and only blocks the search suggestions for "Islam is". We know Google's history, i.e., they are pro-Islam, against Islam critics, permissive toward jihadists, and they kowtow to the brutal dictatorial censors in the Chinese government.

Google is fake, Google is wrong, Google is false...etc.

I also examined Google search suggestions for Hinduism is, Buddhism is, atheism is, and agnosticism is. All of these have at least one negative statement, such as "is false," "is wrong," "is fake," "is bullsh*t," and so on. But 'Islam is' still produces no search suggestions whatsoever. Moreover, when I force in searches such as 'Islam is false' and so on, I find the numbers of results are unrealistically low compared to those for comparable searches for other religions/beliefs.

Google needs to come clean and admit that they are not reporting search suggestions based on actual search statistics. (Admitting that they are actually engineering search suggestions/options may be too much to ask of them).

Switch to Yahoo, folks.

"Entering other search terms relating to Islam appears to support Google's claim. "Islam must" generates the suggested searches "be destroyed", "die", "be stopped", "end" and "go"."--from the article.

This may be a valid point in Google's favor. However, this still does not explain the glitch in question, does not explain the other apparent biases (noted above in the article and in this thread) which favor Islam over other religions/beliefs, and cannot explain away Google's history of bias in regard to Islam-related matters.

In examining incendiary phrases of the "must" type, such as "_____ must die," I also found that "Conservatives must die" yields a suggested search total of 3.89 million, while "Liberals must die" yields 2.12 million results. Perhaps there really are more people writing the former as compared to the latter; but it is also possible that Google is engineering these results, or its sampling, in a manner that removes more anti-Liberal as compared to anti-Conservative rhetoric. In any case, there have been various indications that Google has a left-leaning bias, and this may be yet one more. (I should add that I say this not out of partisanship, because I am probably more left- than right-leaning in general. I'm suggesting that we ought to be concerned about the various biases that so-called search engines may have built in to them, some intentional, some unintentional).

Yahoo only gave three negetive suggestion for "islam is" compared to "Christianity is" which were all negetive.
If these results are genuinely based on actual search phrases used by the general public, then there must be a hack of a lot of haters of Christianity and other faiths compared to islam.
Unless the algorithm used by search engines is programmed to discard all negetive searches relating to islam - which sounds a more likely scenario.

Bug my a**. As a software developer I can assure you this is no bug. Type in "Islam is" in Microsoft's Bing and you get a similar list to what you see in "Christianity is". This is another politically correct move by Google. Shameful. I'm not a big Microsoft fan but I think I'm going to switch to Bing as my primary search engine. I'm tired of Google's BS.

Wow! I just went to the Google page where the search suggestions pop up and verified this. What a beautiful empirical demonstration of self-censorship in response to Islam!!!

Incidentally, it seems that search suggestions only appear (for anything) if you have already done a search and are on the page where various websites are already listed by Google. Then the search box at the top of that page gives search suggestions (unless you put in "Islam is"!!!!!). But the first Google page, on the other hand, where there are no websites listed, because you haven't done a search yet, shows just a search box with the Google logo above it, and does not seem to give any search suggestions for anything.

Just switched to bing

This may genuinely be a "bug" or glitch of some sort that Google needs to fix, but one has to ask why this particular bug seems to be taking so long to fix. It's now been at least a week since this problem was published, and many people, including mainstream media sources, are starting to take note.

When it is fixed, Google will be faced with a bit of a problem. They will probably have to at least state publicly, to those who will ask, that their search suggestions are now working properly again and, in not so many words, yes, you can now find search suggestions that are critical and/or insulting and/or incendiary toward Islam. This creates not only a public relations problem, but the publicity about this particular fact may lead to violent retaliation from militant jihadists. Hence, it's entirely possible that the delay is due to public relations and security concerns, and is not due to a technical fix taking too long. That is, Google may be delaying with the hopes that attention to this problem will dissipate in the ensuing days and/or weeks, and then they will quietly introduce the repair. (Alternatively, if they fix the problem but refuse to comment on it, this may encourage yet more suspicion).

A simple hypothesis that Google is blocking search suggestions that are critical of Islam is probably not correct. For example, if I type in "Muhammad is," the suggestions include "not a prophet," "false prophet," "satan," "the antichrist." (In contrast, "Jesus is" yields positive phrases and no insults etc.). Obviously then, Google is not blocking critical and even insulting search phrases about Islam.

Yet there may be a more subtle and complex form of filtering going on here. However, after spending (or wasting) a bit of time trying out various search phrases, there does not seem to me to be any consistent pattern to the omissions.

Still, in search results, I find that Google, as compared to Yahoo, tends to produce a higher percentage of results that are favorable, as compared to unfavorable, toward Islam. There may be a variety of reasons for this apparent "Islam is" "glitch" which have nothing to do with Google's past history regarding apparently favorable bias toward Islam.

There is absolutely nothing about what has happened to suggest a software bug ... NOTHING.

The two-faced Google "don't be evil" (except when it pays) collaborators know goddamn well that not only is this not a bug, that it CAN'T BE a bug, and also that every technician in the world knows that it can't be a bug.

This is the output of a RULE to which their software (which runs just fine) is responding.

A bug is when your code, your machine, doesn't work ... doesn't do what is expected. A RULE is a piece of information that tells your software how to act.

Code is like a steering wheel, it is a mechanism. A bug is when the mechanism acts weird, like you turn the wheel right and the car goes left.

A RULE is like a set of driving directions. If somebody adds into your directions list that you should turn right, when you should really turn left, you'll go wrong ... but not because your steering mechanism is busted.

Any technician worth a nickel knows IMMEDIATELY that this looks like a RULE setup, not a bug.

Considered as a symptom it is about as mysterious as a toothache. It's a damn sure thing that it's not been caused by a broken leg.

Not that this effect COULDN'T be produced by a bug. But it would be a bug of such a basic fundamental nature that nobody but a rank amateur (and a dumb one at that) would program it into code.

I will add that it is a sure thing that there are no damn bugs of this sort in the Google code, which by and large is of superb quality.

(Think about what level of quality it takes for something as big a Google to work at all ... ever)

Now before I say what comes next, please bear in mind that I recognize that Google is an outstanding software system created by some extraordinarily clever people. But also bear in mind the Wernher von Braun (the famous Nazi missile engineer) was an extraordinarily clever fellow as well.

These people are collaborators. Totalitarian sympathizers. Liars. Scum.

Maybe while they "fix it" they can correct their anti Pro Life attitude also.

Boycott Google. Remember, Google is also cooperating with the Chinese government.

Thanks joeblough. That’s what I figured too, just bad timing.

I like Copernic because it’s flexible and provides a relatively comprehensive search, even the free version which I use. One can do fuzzy like searches, or exact phase. One of my favorite things is the ability to highlight the search term in the searched pages. It saves having to read page after page looking for it. I think now, after so many years, it’s just comfortable. I agree with others above and loathe how Google and Yahoo loads stuff on your computer. That’s caused some serious problems for me in the past, especially when trying to remove them.

I would like to correct one thing though, only 31 results were given for exact phrase “Islam is.”

Thanks for the reply and best regards,

For example, I put in the google bar "jihad is". All the dropdowns are positive to Islam, not against Islam. I do not choose one of their planted choices "jihad is not perpetual war", instead, I continue typing "perpetual warfare".

There. Let's see. I get a page full of "jihad is not perpetual warfare". Wow. Maybe there is no one writing the phrase "jihad is perpetual warfare". Unlikely, but I'll believe it.

But wait, when I type in, using quotations this time, " 'jihad is perpetual warfare' ", I get a clean hit. Now, why didn't that come up the first time? It matched word for word the search term I put in the first time?

It's definitely code problems. It's definitely some really nice Muslim guy who sits next to you at Google cubicle land, who uses all the nice Western amenities at Google's zillion dollar campus, and plays hoops with you at lunch, who is creating special little codelets that redirect inquiry into jihad into apologetic material.

I look around my chemistry, statistics, and calculus classes and see Muslims and am not happy. I hear the Muslim talking to the academic counselor about his flight classes and I am not happy. I see hijabed Muslims taking nursing and I am not happy.

I feel bad that I am not happy. I wish I could want nice things and happy, successful lives for these people. It's painful to not hope they succeed. It's just not in me to wish them ill. But then I think about them driving my children in a cab, or putting a needle in their little arms, or dispensing pharmaceuticals to them, or flying their airplane to spring break, and I remain not happy.

My very soft antijihad will include not being study partners or academic assisters in any way. No lab partners, no physics homework. Create your own intellectual paradise. (/rant)

"But wait, when I type in, using quotations this time, " 'jihad is perpetual warfare' ", I get a clean hit. Now, why didn't that come up the first time? It matched word for word the search term I put in the first time?"

It's because a quoted phrase and an unquoted list of the same words are treated differently. With the quoted phrase it looks for exact matches with the words in the order they are given. With an unquoted phrase it doesn't require the words to appear in the given order, or even to be contiguous.

Thus, looking for "a cat in the hat" will return a different set of results than the same unquoted phrase. In your case, there are lots of hits of pages containing the words "jihad" and "perpetual" and "warfare" just not combined into a single phrase with that exact wording you want.