Google no-show for Veterans Day

WASHINGTON – The dominant search engine in the world marks special occasions including Halloween, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's birthday, the Persian New Year, the birthday of Percival Lowell, the Lunar New Year, the 250th birthday of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Louis Braille's birthday – all celebrated already this year with special graphics and colors.

But 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.

Schmidt also contributed the maximum amount to Sen. Clinton.

Interestingly, Canadian Google users are directed to a site with a slightly different address when using the search engine. Web surfers in the United Kingdom also use Google at a different Internet address.

Today, recognized as Remembrance Day in Australia, Canada, United Kingdom and Ireland to honor war dead, Google's stylized logo features three poppies.

Poppies became associated with Remembrance Day because of the poem written by Canadian physician and Lt. Col. John McCrae in 1915, "In Flanders Fields."

It begins:

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

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