Google

Yesterday WebNewser wrote about the racist image that showed up as the top return in a Google Image search for Michelle Obama. Well, now the offensive image has been removed by the site hosting it. Mark Sweeney of guardian.co.uk writes:

A blog hosting an offensive image of Michelle Obama with monkey features has removed it and posted an apology.

The image, which has been appearing at the top of search results when the words "Michelle Obama" are put into Google Images, was posted on a blog called Hot Girls, which is hosted by the Google-owned blog service, Blogger.

Hot Girls' owner has today removed the image, which appears to have originally been put up with a blog post on 21 October, and displayed an apology in Chinese with a very loose English translation.

Despite complaints about the image, Google decided not to remove it, stating in an explanation linked from an ad (see graphic below) at the top of the "Michelle Obama" Google Images search results:

"Google views the integrity of our search results as an extremely important priority. Accordingly, we do not remove a page from our search results simply because its content is unpopular or because we receive complaints concerning it. We will, however, remove pages from our results if we believe the page (or its site) violates our Webmaster Guidelines, if we believe we are required to do so by law, or at the request of the webmaster who is responsible for the page."

None of that applied, so Google stuck to its policy, which really was all it could be expected to do. Fortunately (and perhaps ironically), the Hot Girls owner showed some class and took the image down on his own.

Of course, it's hardly the last we'll see of this racist image on Google. It'll pop up again elsewhere, a testament to hate's persistence.

If you do a Google Image search for Michelle Obama, here's what you get.

Notice the very first image, on the top left. No, that's not a still shot from Planet of the Apes. It's a racist's hilarious photo-shopped take on an old white supremacist chestnut (seen recently, of course, on the editorial page of the New York Post).

You'd also see this ad from Google right above the image:

You'd think Google would do something about this offensive image beyond apologizing for its prominent presence in search results. Search Engine Land's Matt McGee says it did:

As we reported last week, Google had originally removed the Michelle Obama image on the grounds that the site hosting the image violated Google's guidelines by serving malware to visitors. But the same image remained available on other sites that hadn't run afoul of the rules.

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Rupert Murdoch's recent avowals that News Corp. intends to prohibit Google from accessing for free content published on his newspapers' web sites may seem like an empty threat. After all, Murdoch's IT people could cut off Google today.

But why simply cut Google off from your content when you can strike a deal with some chump a valued partner who will pay you to cut Google off from your content?

From London's Financial Times:

Microsoft has had discussions with News Corp over a plan that would involve the media company being paid to "de-index" its news websites from Google, setting the scene for a search engine battle that could offer a ray of light to the newspaper industry.

The impetus for the discussions came from News Corp, owner of newspapers ranging from the Wall Street Journal to The Sun of the UK, said a person familiar with the situation, who warned that talks were at an early stage.

However, the Financial Times has learnt that Microsoft has also approached other big online publishers to persuade them to remove their sites from Google's search engine.

As the FT.com article notes, Microsoft's proposal could pressure Google to start paying for content it now offers for free. But that all depends on how much pain Google will feel if News Corp. and other content producers take Redmond cash to cut out the search giant. Google currently has more than 65% share of the search market. Yahoo has about 18% and Microsoft's Bing just under 10%. How much will those numbers have to change for Google to do something (pay for content) that could open a Pandora's box?

Over at The AtlanticWire, John Hudson has gathered some opinions about the rumored Microsoft-Murdoch scheme. Billionaire Mark Cuban, for one, thinks it just might work.

CNBC will debut one-hour documentary Inside the Mind of Google, hosted by Maria Bartiromo, Thursday, Dec. 3 at 9 p.m. ET/PT.

The network said Bartiromo will tell "viewers the fascinating story of how two graduate students took a one-time research project and, in barely a decade, turned it into a global technological powerhouse," adding that Bartiromo will examine the company's flagship search engine, go inside company headquarters the "Googleplex" and speak with vice president Marissa Mayer and chief mobile evangelist Vic Gundotra.

Inside the Mind of Google will reair Thursday, Dec. 3 at 10 p.m.; Saturday, Dec. 5 at 7 p.m.; and Sunday, Dec. 6 at 10 p.m.

Google unveiled new technology to automatically add text captions to YouTube videos, The New York Times reported.

The technology can only add English-language captions thus far, but Google told the Times its automatic translation system will enable users to read the captions in 51 languages.

The captioning technology will roll out later this week, initially to only a few channels that specialize in educational content, but expanding gradually, Google told the Times.

Ken Harrenstien, a deaf engineer who helped to develop the automatic captioning system, told the Times:

This is something that I have dreamt of for many years. To see it happen is amazing.

Because the tools are not perfect, we want to make sure that we get feedback from the video owners and the viewers before we roll it out for the whole world. Sometimes the auto-captions are good. Sometimes they are not great, but they are better than nothing if you are hearing-impaired or don't know the language.

Google will begin experimenting with allowing YouTube users to skip pre-roll ads in a test to give the company insight into types of ads that are skipped or viewed, profiles of users who engage in either action and types of ads that are most successful, Online Media Daily reported.

The experiment will also seek to determine at what point during sessions users decide to skip ads, with Google pondering an advertising model where users opt-in to ads and advertisers pay only for users who view the entire ad, according to Online Media Daily.

YouTube product manager Phil Farhi told Online Media Daily:

We're already down that road with promoted videos. We see the ability to skip ads as another form of engagement.

On television, you might need 30 seconds to make sure people know the Website and phone number, and tell them the offer three times. Online, you can run a much shorter industry ad and use the companion ad space for the call to action.

Coming soon to an airport near you: Free Wi-Fi for the holiday traveling season, compliments of Google, with the help of Boingo Wireless, Advanced Wireless Group, Airport Marketing Income and others.

Google announced that the initiative covers 47 airports, including those in Las Vegas; San Jose, Calif.; Boston; Baltimore; Burbank, Calif.; Houston; Indianapolis; Seattle; Miami; Fort Lauderdale, Fla.; Orlando, Fla.; St. Louis; and Charlotte, N.C. The company added that while the initiative extends through Jan. 15, the airports in Burbank and Seattle will offer free Wi-Fi indefinitely.

Google vice president of search products and user experience Marissa Mayer said:

We're very happy to extend our Holiday Wi-Fi gift to the millions of people who will spend time in airports over the next few months. We know that this is a very hectic travel season for people, and we hope that free Wi-Fi will make both traveling and connecting with friends and family a little bit easier.

Boingo Wireless CEO Dave Hagan added:

Google gets this year's Wi-Fi Santa award for sponsoring complimentary access in dozens of airports, both to the traveler's and airport's benefit. In addition to the obvious bonus holiday travelers will enjoy, sponsored access will increase overall Wi-Fi usage in the participating airports and help supplement the airport's increasingly important non-airline incremental revenue.

For a full list of participating airports, click here.

Friend Connect, Google's popular online service that enables Internet users to, well, connect with friends on different web sites by standardizing the look of social applications and content, has added more features, IDG News Service's Juan Carlos Perez reports:

Google's Friend Connect has expanded its roster of social networking and social media services that participating Web publishers can add to their sites.

Friend Connect now has a new section called "Interests" that lets Web publishers pose questions to visitors who register with their sites about their likes, hobbies and preferences.

Other new features allow web publishers to 1) offer people the ability to use their site profiles to send private messages, and 2) fine-tune their sites by aggregating and analyzing data that users make public about their interests, Perez writes.

Launched in May 2008, Friend Connect is now deployed by 9 million web sites worldwide and is available in 59 languages.

From the title of his new book, Googled: The End of the World as We Know It, you might suspect that author and longtime New Yorker magazine media critic Ken Auletta may blame the Internet for the ongoing demise of traditional media. Not so.

Auletta says in an upcoming edition of C-SPAN's "Q&A" program -- his first interview for the new book -- that old media essentially blew it.

"What really bugged me about the time I spent with traditional media...is how late they were to understand the new digital world and how the Internet changed the game. And they had to change and play a new game, and they weren't doing that..."

Auletta does reserve some ire for the hubris displayed by many tech players.

"There's a conceit that people in Silicon Valley have that the Internet is the most transformative technology that the world has ever seen. That's crap...electricity was much more transformative."

The interview will air on C-SPAN Sunday (Nov. 1) at 8 and 11 p.m. ET and Monday (Nov. 2) at 6 p.m. ET. Here's a preview:

MySpace announced that it is delivering streaming music on Google search results following the feature's implementation by the iLike team, which completed iLike's integration into MySpace Music Video and Artist Dashboard last week.

MySpace will provide Google search with audio tracks from major and independent labels, as well as links to music videos and upcoming tour information.

The social-networking site said in a press release from MySpace Music president Courtney Holt:

Today's implementation is only the beginning: Not every MySpace song or tour date is integrated into today's launch. In the coming days, we’ll continue to add additional MySpace songs, video links and tour info to Google search results, leveraging the breadth and depth of content available from the millions of artists on MySpace.

The Google integration is a direct result of the MySpace acquisition of iLike. I'm especially proud of the agility with which we evolved an iLike/Google initiative into a deeper integration with MySpace. I know this is only the beginning of what we can achieve working together and I thank the iLike team for their hard work in bringing this product to life.

We believe the future of MySpace includes enabling the socialization of content not only on MySpace but also on other Websites. Working with partners like Google is an important part of this strategy, and we have plenty of other opportunities ahead of us.