A page for randomness

Even when Google commemorates Independence Day, Lopez has looked for hints of a clandestine liberal sensibility. Last year, she printed a comment from a reader who claimed that the American eagle on Google’s logo was clutching olive branches—but not arrows, the symbol of America’s military might: “I think they’ve gone with a remodeled ‘peace is patriotic’ bumper sticker. They just couldn’t bring themselves to do something ‘American’ without making some kind of signal about current policy.”

All this vitriol leaves Hwang mystified. All they’re trying to do, he says, is bring a little humor and quirkiness to their search engine. “This is just something that grew organically, a culture that developed over the years,” Hwang says. “It made Google feel like it wasn’t just a cold machine, not just an algorithm.” It’s not an issue of Google—like, say, American Airlines or America Online—trying to mask its national origin from foreign eyes. Still, almost from the beginning, the company caught hell for corrupting Americans with evil doodles. “We got e-mails complaining that we celebrated Earth Day,” Hwang laughs. “I was just surprised. We all live on this planet, and celebrating that just seemed like a harmless thing to do.”

Perhaps the most extreme condemnations come from the editors of the populist WorldNetDaily.com, who have all but accused Google of advancing the cause of godless communism. “Google consistently ignores patriotic American holidays such as Memorial Day and Veterans Day,” WorldNetDaily’s editors wrote last October, “but today it acknowledged an accomplishment of the communist Soviet Union, which launched the Sputnik satellite fifty years ago.” The news site, which has also complained that Google’s search rankings keep its stories in the basement, even ominously reported that the company misspelled its logo when commemorating Valentine’s Day last year. “Previous Valentine’s Day logos for Google, obtained by WND, have no such possible confusion for spelling,” the site noted. Could Google even have it in for love?

“If you’re going to choose to commemorate some really quite bizarre occasions, and never, never in their history, never once commemorating Memorial Day, which is a very significant holiday in the United States, I think that says something about who Google is,” says WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah. “By the way,” he adds, “I like Google’s product. I wish there were another company out there that didn’t make me sick to my stomach.”

Read more: Does Google hate America? - By Chris Thompson - Slate Magazine

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