Google Blocking Recommendations For “Islam Is”

From an atheist website:

Why is Google Blocking “Islam Is” Search Recommendations?

Notice when you start typing in the Google search field that it shows recommendations below the field? The recommendations are based on popular searches and a rather nifty algorithm that tries to determine what it is you are searching for.

But Google is intentionally blocking these recommendations for “Islam is…”

Try it for yourself. First, establish exactly what Google should be doing.

In the search field type “Christianity is” and you will see recommendations of “bullsh*t, not a religion, a lie, false, a cult, wrong, fake, dying, Jewish, and not a religion t-shirt.”

In the search field type “Hinduism is” and you will see recommendations of “monotheistic, false, polytheistic, the majority religion of, the oldest religion, not a religion, fake, most commonly found, characterized by, and wrong.”

In the search field type “Buddhism is” and you will see recommendations of “not a religion, wrong, not what you think, bullsh*t, polytheistic, a religion, false, based on what concepts, the best religion, and atheism.”

In the search field type “Judaism is” and you will see recommendations of “false, not a race, not a religion, a race, a religion of the book, not Jewish, a gutter religion, monotheistic, a cult, and a religion.”

Try typing “Atheism is” and you will see recommendations of “a religion, dead, not a religion, wrong, the new fundamentalism, growing, a non-prophet organization, so senseless, illogical, a religion supreme court.” Clearly they are not holding back on the Atheists.

Now, let’s try Islam. Type in “Islam is” and you will see. . .

Absolutely nothing. That’s correct. Google makes no recommendations based on searches of “Islam Is.”

Why is Google blocking search recommendations for “Islam is?”

So why is Google blocking the search recommendations? Are they afraid of offending Muslims who will likely retaliate against Google? Or is it as one person suggested on Facebook, an attempt by Google to simply ignore Islam?

There is an image of the results described in the blog entry here.

We just tried the search for “Islam is,” and sure enough, no recommendations are shown.

Google won its top position among search engines fair and square, but monopolies, especially information monopolies, are a dangerous thing.

[Update]

Our query to Google about this produced the following response from Nate Tyler, one of their PR people:

Thanks so much for the inquiry. This is an issue we take very seriously and, like you, when we saw the reports this week we looked into the issue and discovered that it is indeed a bug and we’re working to fix it as quickly as we can.

Hope this helps.