For the past week, the phrase “white people stole my car” has been Googled like crazy.
Perplexingly, though, there were few results yielded by this popular search and most links lead to some fairly nasty malware. Finally, the above screenshot surfaced, which seems to at least solve the mystery of why the phrase was so popular on Google. As the screenshot above implies, Googling the term “white people stole my car” results in the search engine asking if black people stole my car. Well that’s… really not cool, Google!
But is it real or fake? As of now, Google does not correct the phrase in a racially insensitive way. And while it does appear that at one time Google did, it’s entirely possible and plausible that someone misspelled “black people stole my car,” got the correction shown, and altered the search text as a prank.
Perplexingly, though, there were few results yielded by this popular search and most links lead to some fairly nasty malware. Finally, the above screenshot surfaced, which seems to at least solve the mystery of why the phrase was so popular on Google. As the screenshot above implies, Googling the term “white people stole my car” results in the search engine asking if black people stole my car. Well that’s… really not cool, Google!
But is it real or fake? As of now, Google does not correct the phrase in a racially insensitive way. And while it does appear that at one time Google did, it’s entirely possible and plausible that someone misspelled “black people stole my car,” got the correction shown, and altered the search text as a prank.
[Source: Snopes message boards]