“The Sexual Politics of Google”

At Balkinization, Jack Balkin notes:

When you type “she invented” into Google, it returns: Did you mean: “he invented”

The same, by the way, also applies for Google searches for “she created,” “she succeeded,” and “she led.” Lest you think that this happens for all active verbs, Google does not make the same suggestion for “she followed” or “she failed.”

Balkin spotted a description of this phenomena at Digg, where by the second comment the sexist “humor” is already flying. At Balkinization, the commenters instead are quite focused on explaining why it isn’t Google’s fault and isn’t sexist either, because darn it all, Google was just designed that way! Yeesh.

–Ann Bartow, via my awesome colleague Josie Brown.