Google Maps was at the center of Internet outrage this week with demands for apologies, and heads to roll, in an unfortunate set of circumstances that associated 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue with racist search terms.
It emerged that searches of "n****r house" or "n****r king" in Google Maps brought up the home of Barack Obama, and Google very quickly responded with an investigation. In the meantime, the story took off and all eyes were on the Mountain View giant.
It's not as if racism is new to the Internet; let's be honest this place is full of assholes, but for it to appear as a top result in such an important Google service raised questions. How could this happen? How could Google let it happen?
Unsurprisingly, it was down to the aforementioned assholes that roam the digital plains and spread their toxicity wherever they can be seen. It's no secret that Google is constantly probing the web and using that crowdsourced pile of data to drive features of its services.
Yeah, you can already see where this is going!
In online discussions of the White House, racist slurs were used frequently enough for Google's systems to strongly associate them with the location. That crowdsourced data scoured from every corner of the web mixed with some offensive search terms in Google Maps produced a very embarrassing result for Google, and one that was offensive to a lot of people.
"We were deeply upset by this issue, and we are fixing it now," stated Jen Fitzpatrick, VP, Engineering & Product Management, Google. "We apologize this has taken some time to resolve."
As of now, Google is making key changes to its algorithms that will likely exclude information containing offensive terms when mining data to associate with physical locations. Google has already developed preventative safeguards for its general Search, and they are now being built-upon for Maps and other services.
"Again, we sincerely apologize for the offense this has caused, and we will do better in the future," Fitzpatrick concluded.
It's not as if racism is new to the Internet; let's be honest this place is full of assholes, but for it to appear as a top result in such an important Google service raised questions. How could this happen? How could Google let it happen?
Unsurprisingly, it was down to the aforementioned assholes that roam the digital plains and spread their toxicity wherever they can be seen. It's no secret that Google is constantly probing the web and using that crowdsourced pile of data to drive features of its services.
Yeah, you can already see where this is going!
In online discussions of the White House, racist slurs were used frequently enough for Google's systems to strongly associate them with the location. That crowdsourced data scoured from every corner of the web mixed with some offensive search terms in Google Maps produced a very embarrassing result for Google, and one that was offensive to a lot of people.
"We were deeply upset by this issue, and we are fixing it now," stated Jen Fitzpatrick, VP, Engineering & Product Management, Google. "We apologize this has taken some time to resolve."
As of now, Google is making key changes to its algorithms that will likely exclude information containing offensive terms when mining data to associate with physical locations. Google has already developed preventative safeguards for its general Search, and they are now being built-upon for Maps and other services.
"Again, we sincerely apologize for the offense this has caused, and we will do better in the future," Fitzpatrick concluded.
