Google celebrates communist Sputnik

October 4, 2007

Google’s Sputnik commemoration

Google consistently has ignored patriotic American holidays such as Memorial Day and Veterans Day, but today it acknowledged an accomplishment of the communist Soviet Union, which launched the Sputnik space satellite 50 years ago.

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

But as WND reported, for the ninth year in a row, Google declined to mark Memorial Day – something the company has done for the Chinese New Year, Valentine’s Day, Halloween and other observances.

With the surprise launch of Sputnik 1 in 1957, the Soviet Union leaped ahead in the race for space between the U.S. and the communist empire. Sputnik’s success followed the failure of the first two Project Vanguard launch attempts by the U.S.

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 Veterans Day and Memorial Day since the company’s inception in 1999, 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.

Special offers:

Google exposed in “Stop the Presses!” autographed and inscribed to your specifications only at WND’s online store.

FREE! Coulter exposes liberals’ ‘Godless’ religion

‘Help! Mom! There are Liberals Under My Bed’

Computer screen fuzzy? Try the best cleaning solution in the world

Previous stories:

Google snubs Memorial Day, again

More evidence of Google’s ‘evil’?

Is Google’s agenda becoming less ‘evil’?

Melting iceberg marks Earth Day

Farah’s Google indictment big news in Tibet