Search engine giant Google has tendered an apology to Prime Minister Narendra Modi after his images emerged in its search results for ‘Top 10 Criminals’.
“It definitely troubles us. This is not reflective of our opinion. We apologise for this. We are working to prevent such expected results,” said Google.
“Sometimes, the way images are described on the internet can yield surprising results to specific queries. We apologise for any confusion or misunderstanding this has caused. We’re continually working to improve our algorithms to prevent unexpected results like this,” Google said.
#Top10Criminals was among the top trends on Tuesday morning and triggered a rage among Modi followers. The list also features many others including former U.S. President George Bush along with hardcore criminals and terrorists of the world.
A disclaimer by Google also appears when ‘top 10 criminals is typed in Google image search, “These results don’t reflect Google’s opinion or our beliefs; our algorithms automatically matched the query to web pages with these images.”
Google said that results to the query “top 10 criminals in India” was due to a British daily which had an image of Mr. Modi and erroneous metadata. It said that in this case, the image search results were drawn from multiple news articles with images of Mr. Modi and his statements with regard to politicians with criminal background. The spokesperson added that the news articles do not link Mr. Modi to criminal activity, and the words just appeared in close proximity to each other.
