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Friday, March 26, 2004

Top-ranked Page For "Jew" Anti-semitic

“Online searchers punching the word “Jew” into the Google search engine may be surprised at the results they get.

In fact, the No. 1 result for the search entry “Jew” turns out to be www.jewwatch.com. The fanatically anti-Semitic hate site is ranked first in relevance of more than 1.72 million Web pages.”
– Joe Eskenazi, Googling Anti-Semitism (The Jewish Journal), March 19, 2004

 

“It sure seems to me that’s Google been gamed by anti-Semites. At least, I hope that’s the explanation since the alternative is pretty grim.

I admit that this is a tough – and interesting – case, but I’d like to see Google move the site down since Google’s aim is to provide us with good information.”
– Dave Weinberger, Jewgle (Joho the Blog), March 24, 2004

 

“[Google co-creator Sergey Brin] talked about how Google does look at the results and tweaks them in some cases. If memory serves, the two specific examples he gave were suicide and heart attack, where Google looked at the top results generated algorithmically, then tweaked to make sure that a suicide prevention* hotline came up on the top for suicide, and a page about what to do if you feel you are having a heart attack comes up for the second.”
– Tim Bishop, Jewgle - Comments (Joho the Blog), March 24, 2004

*See Consulting the Web in Times of Trouble

 

“The question you should be asking is whether you want Google to substitute their own sense of morals (or “Decency”) for those of your own.

We don’t ask traffic lights to turn green for good people and red for bad; Nor do we expect the fire department to prioritize their duties based upon ethical scores.

Why would we want Google, essentially a web utility, to create some hierarchy of good and evil? What makes them qualified?

And how long is it before some government official’s sense of decency gets offended*, and Google can no longer search for criticism of (fill in the blank).”
– Barry Ritholtz, Google’s Dilemma - Comments (Dan Gillmor’s EJournal), March 24, 2004

*We should keep in mind Google already censors specific sites on request.

 

“Just game them back. Have large numbers of sites point to appropriate links for the word “Jew"*”
– Joe Buck, Google’s Dilemma - Comments (Dan Gillmor’s EJournal), March 24, 2004

*Like this: Jew.

Yahoo-Watch.org

[Yahoo]

You probably visited Google-Watch.org before. There’s also Yahoo-Watch.org by the same guy, Daniel Brandt. [Via Battelle.]

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