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Google and Yahoo remove “Sympathize with Gaza”
Posted by Edmund on February 6, 2008
I was reading on another blog that Google had removed all photos of Aboutrika with his shirt up. So I checked, and then I checked Yahoo! image search as well. I am appalled.
When searching the words “sympathize with Gaza”, “Aboutrika”, ” Aboutrika Gaza”, “soccer Gaza”, “futbol Gaza” or any other combination only photo that is 300 pixels shows up. and that was only for “aboutrika gaza”.
Reported on Saudi newspaper AL-Watan, Israel pressured Google to remove all the images of Egyptian footballer Abu Trika showing his T-shirt with the text “Sympathize with Gaza” [also confirmed by Al-Arabiya…or you can do the search by yourself].
I searched for myself. I don’t know if the reports from these newspapers is true or just propaganda, but the pictures have been removed, that much is fact.
But why would something like this happen? When has it become a crime to stand up for humanity? The internet of all places should be uncensored and transcend racist ideology, this is a step backwards. 100+ Palestinians (mostly from Gaza) have died at the hands of Israelis since the first meeting at Annapolis. Countless more have died from lack of medical attention while waiting at Israeli checkpoints and roadblocks.
February 6, 2008 at 10:50 am
[...] The Philistine wrote an interesting post today on Google and Yahoo remove "Sympathize with Gaza"Here’s a quick excerpt” Aboutrika Gaza”, “soccer Gaza”, “futbol Gaza”… [...]
February 10, 2008 at 1:25 pm
So it turns out this story isn’t actually true. It just took a few days to crawl the image - their crawl isn’t instant:
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/debunking-a-misconception-plus-a-reminder-of-how-search-engines-work/
http://images.google.com/images?gbv=2&hl=en&q=aboutrika+gaza&btnG=Search+Images
February 10, 2008 at 3:03 pm
The event happened on the 26th or 27th of January. It took two weeks to index the photos?
So I looked, if you google any combination you get two photos of the shirt and two photos of me. How many different sites have the picture? Immediately after the event pictures were everywhere, now only 2? Thanks for reposting the ideas on this site but Matt Cutts needs stop defending their employers when there is a legitimate claim.
February 12, 2008 at 8:00 am
The picture is still not there,
February 12, 2008 at 6:24 pm
I don’t think that’s a legitimate claim at all. I have tested google search myself on my blog. It’s not instantaneous, and how quickly a site or picture is crawled is directly proportional to how popular it is.
How popular is Abu trika when compared to any other hot inernet search subject ?
The images, and the story appear on both google news and google images.
An unchecked news story from al-arabiya.