The Indian Twitteratti were in a tizzy yesterday, after the Prime Minister Narendra Modi was starred if you search for ‘Top 10 Criminals’ in Google Image Search. It even prompted Google to issue an apology. Why did this latest Google Bomb create such a furore, seeing such Google Bombs are not so uncommon?
The term Google Bomb has been around for 11 years now, and denotes a totally unexpected result put up by the Google Search Algorithm. It originated during the 2004 US Presidential Polls when a Google Search for ‘Miserable Failure’ led to the then President George Bush. A fortnight or so ago another Google Bomb exploded with a tangential allusion to current US President Barrack Obama. In that case a Google Map search for ‘Ni**a House’ brought up The White House.
And now the image search for ‘Top 10 criminals’ has Narendra Modi’s image in the results. Apart from the apology, Google quickly put up a disclaimer in the ‘Top 10 criminals’ results page, ‘results don’t reflect Google’s opinion or our beliefs; our algorithms automatically matched the query to web pages with these images’. Search results for ‘Top 10 actors’ or ‘Top 10 cars’ do not have that disclaimer.
While the political supporters of Narendra Modi have been up in arms, his detractors are having a quiet laugh. Even among the twitteratti, there was not the expected amount of surprise or disgust. Why was it so?
The reason probably is that Narendra Modi, after becoming the Prime Minister still carries on as if he is in election mode. He still has an attitude of ‘me/us-versus-others’, and has the questionable habit of expressing his political opinions even on his various foreign jaunts. Narendra Modi has simply failed to make the leap as the Prime Minister of the Indian Union as a whole, and instead acts as if he is the BJP Prime Minister for India.
Except for the fact that he is still held in awe by the media, and enjoys enormous goodwill among them, anyone else would have been crucified for such vainglorious and short-sighted attitude and statements, for e.g., that people were ashamed of being born Indian till he became the Prime Minister.
To such a man, this Google image Search results on ‘Top 10 criminals’ must be galling. I wonder how he would feel when the Monsoon chooses to shun his nation!
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