I was under the impression that anything which segregated people by the colour of their skin was offensive and could be classed as possibly racist. But it seems search engines don’t play by those rules, and a new search engine to cater exclusively for black people is making headway (and headlines) on the Internet.

I use Google every day, and I find it to be the most inclusive and accurate search engine I have ever used. In the vast majority of cases, the site I am looking for comes up near the top of the first page of results. But then I’m white, and Google apparently discriminates against black people.

At least, that is the claim made by Johnny C. Taylor, who launched a new search engine called RushmoreDrive in April. Taylor tells the L.A. Times that the search engine has been launched to fill a void that Google reportedly cannot, a search engine specifically aimed at black people. In fact, he thinks of it as “the black Google”.

You may be wondering why a black Google is necessary when the Google we all know and love isn’t a white Google, but Taylor has an answer for that.

Someone said to me, ‘We don’t have a white Google, why do you need a black Google? And I said, ‘Of course you do — It’s called Google.’

So according to Taylor, the search results on Google are institutionally racist, and RushmoreDrive (named rather oddly after the street where the company’s offices are) redresses the balance.

Taylor used a few examples to demonstrate his point.

If you search for ‘Whitney’ on Google, you are likely to see the Whitney Museum of Art at the top of the results page. Taylor argues that a black person is likely to be searching for Whitney Houston instead, and she only appears at number four in the search results. RushmoreDrive puts Whitney Houston at the top.

There is also the fact that the RushmoreDrive algorithm is set to crawl pages more often and more deeply from sites such as chitterlings.com, a website dedicated to soul food, because black people are more likely to visit these sort of sites.

I am white, but even I find that offensive. It’s incredibly degrading to assume what a person would be searching for purely based on the colour of their skin. God forbid that a black person would actually visit an art museum. No, they must want information on Whitney Houston, because she’s black as well.

As Mathew Ingram deduces, the idea is dumb as well as highly offensive to people of all races. Just the idea of segregating search engines fills me with amazement in this liberal day and age. I’d love to hear what other people think of this idea, and unlike RushmoreDrive, I don’t need to know what colour your skin is.

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Entry was posted on Saturday, August 16th, 2008 at 1:39 pm under Google, Internet, Opinion.

Read more entries by Dave Parrack.
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