I Spit on Google

Once again, Google DIDN'T run a special image on their homepage in honor of Memorial Day today.

This seems like a strange sort of slight (almost un-American), because, apparently, they'll run a special "Google" graphic for almost anything.

Here's a few examples for 2007...

Valentine's Day:


Earth Day:


This year they even celebrated Yuri Gagarin as the "First Man in Space":


But NOTHING for Memorial Day. What gives?

A 2006 article from WorldNetDaily may provide somewhat of an answer - and to be fair, this is a conservative site I found through a Google search (link):

...for the 8th year in a row, Google has made no effort to commemorate any holiday honoring U.S. veterans or war dead – no tributes to Veterans Day or Memorial Day.

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 has also ignored Christmas and Easter. Interestingly, Google for Canada honors Rememberance Day, the Canadian version of the U.S. Veterans Day.

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 besieged 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.

Memorial Day is NOT a "conservative" holiday and for Google to ignore it out of some misguided internal political philosophy is laughable (and deserving of a bitch-smack).