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By Newsweek Editors
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Is Google anti-semitic? For the past three years, if you typed the word "Jew," the first result was Jew Watch, a compendium of hate and Holocaust denial. "It's certainly not something I want to see," says Google cofounder Sergey Brin. So why not "fix" it so that Google points searchers to something else? "The purpose of Google is to provide quality information to people who want that information," he says, and determining what users view is akin to censorship. Because people seldom type "Jew" when they want to learn about Judaism, Jew Watch has been the most relevant for that query (which is why it's listed first). Google now places a link-- "Offensive Search Results"--above the Jew Watch listing, explaining the site's placement. Concerned outsiders have taken action by "Google bombing" the term--creating links to a different site in order to push it higher on the results. Soon people may see a different top choice for "Jew": a hate-free entry in the participatory reference work called Wikipedia.
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