News 

By typing 'jew' into Google the top ranked site that appears is 'Jew Watch', a site that claims to be 'Keeping a Close Watch on Jewish Communities & Organizations Worldwide'.

Whilst much of the content is laughable a lot of the material is plain nasty and links to many anti-Jewish sites from the Nazi to the plain nuts. It also mentions various Jewish world conspiracies and texts going back to Martin Luther.

In an interview with Reuters, Google founder Sergey Brin said 'I certainly am very offended by the site, but the objectivity of our rankings is one of our very important principles.' Brin, who is Jewish himself, stated 'We don't let our personal views - religious,

ADVERTISEMENT

political, ethical or otherwise - affect our results.'

That said, Google has taken the unprecedented step of issuing an explanation distancing itself from the Jew Watch website and explaining the automated procedures for its listings.

Free speech issues aside, Google fears that if it set a precedent by removing the site, it would open the door to a torrent of complaints from people who might complain this or that site is offensive in some way. In the medium term it may not even work. While Yahoo! does not include Jew Watch in its listings, it does include sites which turn out to be mirrors of Jew Watch. However, this hasn't stopped Jewish groups campaigning to get the site removed.

'It's racist, anti-semitic and NOT what I'd call "Jew friendly".' said campaigner Brian Klein. ' When Google was contacted about this Jewish organisations basically got a run-around and were told that in order for Google to rectify the problem, we would need some sort of petition with at least 50,000 names.'

Anyone wishing to join the petition to have the site removed from Google can sign up at www.removejewwatch.com.