Google and the Swastika (卐)
July 10, 2008 – 11:30 am by JeffSo I was checking my Google Trends this morning and I noticed a very bizarre and frightening symbol on the list of most searched topics at Google. A swastika! WTF? We all know that Google is mobilizing for global domination and annihilates internet competition by the thousands, but this is just a little insane!
In actuality, the symbol has a much deeper meaning than what most people associate it with today. The swastika is considered extremely holy and auspicious by all Hindus, and is regularly used to decorate items related to Hindu culture. The symbol is also significant in Buddhism and Jainism cultures and can be seen on religious artifacts throughout India, China, and Japan. The swastika’s Indian name comes the Sanskrit word svasti, meaning good fortune, luck and well being. In China and Japan, the Buddhist swastika was seen as a symbol of plurality, eternity, abundance, prosperity and long life.
It is a real shame that some psychopath with a flavor savor and delusions of grandeur had to ruin this symbol of prosperity and auspiciousness for the rest of the world. What an asshole.
In case anyone was wondering, the symbol shown on the Google Trends is actually The Tibetan swastika known as nor bu bzhi -khyil, or quadruple body symbol, defined by the Unicode character U+0FCC. It is a symbol of the Tibetan character set. Why everyone was searching for it is beyond me.
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3 Responses to “Google and the Swastika (卐)”
Looks like the evil eyes at Google have caught on…the symbol suddenly went from #1 on the list to being completely removed from the list altogether.
And the plot thickens on this one. The LA Times ran a story about Google apologizing for the symbol. At the same time, it has angered just as many people that Google had to “edit” the trends (trends are trends, right?). Sounds like a lose-lose situation for Google.
Oh…an apparently the folks that run the Google Trends are based out of Tel Aviv, just to complicate things further.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/webscout/2008/07/google-apologiz.html
And STILL the plot continues the thicken. TechCrunch has a nice article about the forum that lead to the Swastika reaching the top trends. But now others are trying to duplicate this - like this one example that got “fuck you Google”, written upside down, to reach #1 on the trend list.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/14/google-trends-subverted-again/