GOOGLE HAS APOLOGISED after map searches for ‘n***** king’ brought people to the White House.
The racist search term was revealed by the Washington Post:
A Google spokesperson told the Washington Post:
Some inappropriate results are surfacing in Google Maps that should not be, and we apologise for any offence this may have caused. Our teams are working to fix this issue quickly.
The newspaper was tipped off by a reader, and found that when it tested the claim, the racial slur did indeed bring users straight to the White House.
This isn’t the first time Google Maps has had something inappropriate on it – back in April, it emerged that someone put an Android mascot peeing on an apple as an Easter egg on the map system.
However, a person adding a racial slur to refer to the home of the President of the United States is different scenario to a beef between companies.
To try and curb the behaviour, Google has put a temporary stop to Map Maker editing by members of the public.
As announced last week, we are temporarily disabling editing on Map Maker starting today, while we continue to work towards making the moderation system more robust.
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