The former prime minister of the UK and one of the most esteemed national leaders of Great Britain Winston Churchill’s knowledge graph from Google has recently vanished mysteriously.
This inexplicable event took place not only in the UK and US but a lot of people from South Africa and Australia have complained about this on social media. When inquired about this, a representative from Google said this must be a default error as sometimes in the process of updating, pictures are deleted or lost for a little time.
Speaking of the rectification of this shocking incident, which a lot of people are referring to as ‘disgusting’ and ‘disgraceful’, Google SearchLiaison said they have no idea yet to how much time it will take till things are back to normal again. However, he made sure this was not an intentional action.
Mind blowing if this is deliberate policy, @Google. Western Europe would almost certainly be enslaved if it wasn’t for the man whose photo is now absent. https://t.co/VsURjAVdCs
ADVERTISEMENT — Simon Clarke MP (@SimonClarkeMP) June 14, 2020
This occurred in the middle of anti-racism protests all over England, some of which witnessed violence and social unrest. An angry mob of demonstrators swarmed over Parliament Square in the capital and dubbed the statue of Winston Churchill as ‘was a racist’.
The march leader Imam Ayton, who is a 29-year old young woman, said Churchill’s statue should be removed as he was a racist. Further expressing her sentiments, she spoke to BBC Radio 4 saying any person who speaks negatively about Black people is going to be offensive, henceforth it is only right to move the statue to the museum.
Meanwhile, his granddaughter Emma Soames told the same station that she is deeply hurt that her grandfather, who unified the whole nation into one, has become an icon of controversy. However, she agreed to move his statue to the museum if that makes people angry as it will be much safer there.
On the contrary, Winston Churchill’s grandson Nicholas Soames opposes the sentiments. He says this is ‘rubbish’ and ‘lunatic’ to call his grandfather a racist and suggests the activists to ‘go study your history’.
On the other hand, Google faced backlash after this incident. The search giant said on Sunday that there appeared to be a glitch and that it was “not purposeful”.
They took it to Twitter and said,
“We’re aware an image for Sir Winston Churchill is missing from his knowledge graph entry on Google,” the firm’s search liaison arm announced on Twitter.
They further added, “We apologize for any concern. This was not purposeful and will be resolved. Images in such panels are automatically created and updated. During an update, they can briefly disappear.”
Two hours after the problem was confirmed, Google restored the image of Churchill. Later on, the company gave a more detailed explanation.
“At the end of April, we received feedback that the image of Churchill automatically selected by our systems wasn’t representative of him. The systems had selected a picture of a younger Winston Churchill (shown below), while he’s more famously & iconically pictured when older…”
Well, whatever the reason was, Google did face backlash, and a lot of people weren’t happy with what happened. What are your opinions on this incident?