15 January 2010 | Author: D. Warburton Search Copywriter

Google censors 'racist' search result in Australia

Google has agreed to remove links to a website that contains racist views of Aboriginal Australians.

The Mountain View giant acknowledged its legal responsibility to remove the offending search result - an entry on the satirical website Encyclopedia Dramatica. The site is a parody of Wikipedia that is renowned for its use of content with shock value, and indigenous Australian Steve Hodder-Watt came across its entry for 'Aboriginal' after entering the search term "Aboriginal and Encyclopedia" into the search engine.

The Syndey Morning Herald reports that Mr Hodder-Watt filed an official complaint with the Australian Human Rights Commission. His lawyer George Newhouse described the webpage's content as: "one of the most offensive sorts of racial vilification you could possibly find.

"It portrays indigenous Australians in the most unsavoury light possible, and you wouldn't want a child stumbling across it."

Mr Newhouse believed that the site falls within the description of sites that will be filtered under legislation being proposed by the Federal Government, which will require all service providers to ban content classed as "refused classification."

Google's action to censor search content is particularly interesting in light of its recent announcement to stop censoring search results in China. Google has previously blocked certain websites in accordance with the wishes of the Chinese government, but released a statement on Tuesday stating: "We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all."

Google was aware of the seriousness of this decision, continuing: "We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China."

With Google potentially abandoning the Chinese search market, experts have debated the potential benefits for Microsoft and Yahoo!

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