Memorial Day 'war': Yahoo vs. Google

Yahoo's home page featured military dog tags and a purple heart to honor America's veterans on Memorial Day 2008

Internet giant Google is again coming under fire for its apparent snub of Memorial Day, but the company's biggest competition, Yahoo, displayed a holiday-oriented logo featuring military dog tags and a purple heart.

"It's Memorial Day, the day Americans honor those who have served and given their lives in defense of our freedom. And once again Google, the Internet giant search company, has chosen not to honor these people," said WND reader Darin Kallen.

"I'm not asking for a boycott of Google or any sort of letter/e-mail campaign. Freedom means you are free to make decisions with which I may disagree. Rather, I'm just making an observation that it's easy to say you support the troops, but actions speak louder than words. And some action from Google would be appreciated."

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Google's commemoration of Veterans Day 2007, the first time it has honored the U.S. holiday. Google has never posted a special design for Memorial Day.

As WND reported in November, it took nearly a decade, but Google finally honored Veterans Day with a special holiday design.

Users who logged onto Google's home page last fall saw three World War I-era helmets capping the letters "o" and "e" in Google's name.

The decoration was a marked departure for the company, which has come under criticism from veterans' groups for ignoring American holidays such as Veterans Day and Memorial Day since Google's inception in 1999.

The firm, known for its widely used search engine, regularly modifies its logo to commemorate holidays, historical events and figures.

Upset by Google's inaction regarding Memorial Day, the Zombietime blog last May initiated a contest asking readers to design logos for Google that would be appropriate for the holiday.

The blogger received some 250 possibilities, with entries featuring purple hearts, American flags, the Statue of Liberty and the Iwo Jima flag-raising.

Google has never posted a special logo design for Memorial Day, including this entrant from an online contest initiated by the Zombietime blog.

Zombietime notes Google "has never responded or even acknowledged receipt of the submission."

As WND reported in 2006, Google had no problem honoring the war dead of other countries, creating a special logo with poppies for Remembrance Day in Australia, Canada, Ireland and the United Kingdom.

Google's Sputnik commemoration

Last October, Google acknowledged an accomplishment of the communist Soviet Union, which launched the Sputnik space satellite in 1957.

Google also has given special honors for astronomer Percival Lowell, artist Edvard Munch and Louis Braille, inventor of the writing system for the blind.

Other days commemorated included National Teachers Day, Women's Day, Ray Charles' birthday, World Water Day and St. George's Day.

Besides overlooking Memorial Day, it also has ignored Christmas.

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 former 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.

Schmidt also contributed the maximum amount to Sen. Clinton.

Read the related commentary: The meaning of sacrifice

 

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