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US First Lady Michelle Obama - Source: Reuters
Search engine Google is apologising for an image-search result of Michelle Obama showing her in a racist caricature.
The number one Google image-search result depicts the First Lady photo-edited to resemble a monkey.
According to the Washington Post a spokesman for Google says search results are a reflection of the content on the web and simply reflect what is out there.
The racist image was previously removed by Google due to a complaint, however, that was because the site hosting the image was also serving malware to user's computers. The image has since been reloaded onto a different site which is not serving malware and under Google policy will remain there unless there is further policy violation.
Google have used a house ad above the image stating: "Sometimes our search results can be offensive."
Google also used the ad to say: "We do not remove a page from our search results simply because its content is unpopular or because we receive complaints concerning it. We will, however, remove pages from our results if we believe the page (or its site) violates our Webmaster Guidelines, if we believe we are required to do so by law, or at the request of the webmaster who is responsible for the page."
