Google again snubs George Washington

WorldNetDaily ^ | 2/19/07 | Bob Unruh

[wagglebee]

 

Honoring China's 'The Year of the Pig'

Over the weekend, Google highlighted the Chinese New Year – the year of the pig – with a couple of the porkers dancing in place of the "Os" in its name. But today, the Internet behemoth that recognizes holidays and special events with modifications to its logo declined to recognize the birthday of George Washington, "the father of our country" and the first president of the United States.

It's been able, in recent months, to highlight special honors for Percival Lowell, Edvard Munch and Louis Braille. Lowell was an astronomer, Munch an artist, and Braille developed Braille writing for the blind.

Honoring Percival Lowell

But while the rest of the nation marked the 275th anniversary of the birth of George Washington, Google did not. Google officials also did not return WND e-mails and messages inquiring about the lack of recognition for Washington.

Honoring Edvard Munch

The only reference to Washington on the company's various corporate pages was on its GoogleBlog, where in 2006 Jen Grant, the product marketing manager for Google Book search, wrote a couple of paragraphs promoting the features of the search.

Why are we paging through presidential history? Today is Presidents Day – or, to be more accurate, Washington's Birthday. What we now call Presidents Day was first celebrated on February 22, 1796, commemorating George Washington's birth in 1732. But according the calendar that was in use when Washington was born, his birthday was on the 11th, not the 22nd. When he was a young man of 20, Great Britain and her colonies adopted the modern Gregorian calendar, skipping 11 days and making January, not March, the first month of the year.

That's right – over the course of Washington's life, the times quite literally changed. And to make things even more complicated, in 1968 Congress passed a law making the third Monday in February a holiday commemorating Washington's Birthday, regardless of the date. Since then, historically minded sorts have suggested it be called "Presidents Day" to account for Lincoln's February 12 birthday too; today many people associate the third Monday in February with both Washington and Lincoln.

Grant then listed some of the featured items in a search of the Google Books Library Project.

Honoring Louis Braille

As WND reported last week, Google acknowledged Valentine's Day with a special modification of its logo that appeared to spell "Googe."

Google's 2007 Valentine's Day logo appears to be missing the letter 'L' at first glance

Other days that have been honored have included National Teachers Day, Women's Day, Ray Charles birthday, World Water Day and St. George's Day,

The company came under fire when recently, for the 8th year in a row, it made no effort to commemorate any holiday honoring U.S. veterans or war dead on either Veterans Day or Memorial Day. It claimed the holiday was too solemn, though its Canadian homepage did feature a tribute to fallen soldiers.

Google's holiday signature is a dressed-up corporate logo for major holidays and lesser-known occasions alike. Besides overlooking Veterans Day and Memorial Day since the company's inception in 1999, it also has ignored Christmas.

Google has been criticized for its one-sided political contributions and content policies:

• Rejecting an ad for a book critical of Bill and Hillary Clinton while continuing to accept anti-Bush themes

• Rejecting ads critical of Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., while continuing to run attack ads against former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas.

• Allowing the communist Chinese government to have the search engine block "objectionable" search terms such as "democracy."

In addition, the company came under fire for an editorial decision giving preferential placement to large, elite media outlets such as CNN and the BBC over independent news sources, such as WND, even if they are more recent, pertinent and exhaustive in their coverage.

As WND reported, 98 percent of all political donations by Google employees went to support Democrats, and as a matter of fact, Al Gore is now a senior adviser to Google.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt gave the maximum legal limit of donations to Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry and to primary candidate Howard Dean.

Schmidt also contributed the maximum amount to Sen. Clinton.

[wagglebee]

I'm sure Google will also skip Passover and Easter, but promote May Day or Earth Day or whatever it's called now.

[wagglebee]

Washington Ping (sort of)

[ButThreeLeftsDo]

The Google boys are in hiding from the muzzies after the pig-thing........

[dforest]

I am sure Mr. Washington is rolling is his grave wondering what the heck is a google? He sure ain't missing much.

[unkus]

I'm sure George Washington and all the other decent people of his day would see today's world as "hell on Earth". They would think the world was "possessed". And they would be right.

[I'm ALL Right!]

I do not use Google, and this is exactly why.

[Extremely Extreme Extremist]

Who cares, why is this news whenever Google does this?

They are a private company - Washington birthday is still being honored. If it's not honored by a left-wing website, what's the big deal?

[dforest]

I'm sure George Washington and all the other decent people of his day would see today's world as "hell on Earth". They would think the world was "possessed". And they would be right.

Thats along the lines of what I was thinking. George is better off where he is. All that work and strife to form this nation, and look what we have done to it. He would see us as ungrateful,selfish, and cowardly fools.

[unkus]

If I can, I will avoid using Google. Who would you recommend? Thanks.

[SierraWasp]

"Google acknowledged Valentine's Day with a special modification of its logo that appeared to spell "Googe."

I was shocked, stunned and amazed that they would leave their GREEN "L" out of their insensitive company's logo for nearly a week!!!

Anybody remember that ditty we heard as small children... "Barny Goggle, with his goog, goog, googly eyes!"???

[Radix]

I was wondering what those piggys were there for.

[unkus]

You're right. If our Founding Fathers and all who fought to found this country don't know our current condition, they are blessed.

[wagglebee]

I figured it was a subliminal endorsement of Hitlery.

[Shermy]

"declined to recognize the birthday of George Washington, "the father of our country" and the first president of the United States."

So what? Congress itself declined to recognize George Washington when it erased his holiday.

The airline and travel lobbies wanted a neat, predictable three-day weekend, so they bribed donated campaign contributions to Congress and, Voila!, we have "Presidents Day."

MIght as well celebrate Millard Filmore. The attachment of this day to Washington and Lincoln is just a hangover from prior tradition Congress obliterated. Connecting this day to the study of Lincoln and Washington is a dying belief.

[SamAdams76]

So much ado over a stupid logo.

Anyway, I don't see anybody else observing Washington's Birthday. Oh sure, a lot of people got the day off. But did they sit around at home reflecting upon the Father of our Country? I'd say not. Instead, we all went shopping, went to the movies, cleaned the basement and sundry other things.

In fact "President's Day" is now known more for getting good deals on cars at the auto dealerships just like Memorial Day is more famous for the Indy 500 and Labor Day is more famous for end-of-summer barbecues. Eventually, some kind of sporting event will come to supersede this here Martin Luther King Day.

All these "birthday" holidays are a joke anyhow. We should do away with them and take a day off in the summer instead where we can barbeque and go to the beach.

[incredulous joe]

My wife has been using something called Goodsearch, which gives some tiny percentage of our searches to my son's school.

I been slow to make the change, but there are more than enough reasons to make the switch.

[Pharmboy]

Yeah...no surprise. They have no sense of history. Sad.

I guess we should be happy they don't do something special for Karl Marx' birthday (yet).

[Richard Kimball]

http://www.dogpile.com does a collective search of several web sites, but does not give the hits to Google. I use Google because it's the best search engine, but if you want to avoid giving them money, just don't click on any Google ads. That's where they make their cash. Even if you don't click Google, you're still giving them money if you click on Google ads on other web sites.

[MrLee]

I use "Clusty" instead of Google.

[wagglebee]

I started using Yahoo back in the mid-90s and have never seen a reason to use Google; however, Yahoo's political biases are very leftist too.