Anyone familiar with Google‘s main search page will know that the company often replaces their ubiquitous font logo with a special design that commemorates a special event, person or holiday for the relevant day. Google maintains a website that catalogs the various themes, dating all the way back to 2000, when the tradition first started. With the opening of the Vancouver Olympics on Friday, Google began rotating Olympic themed versions of their logo last week, with each day featuring a different sporting event (the Olympic ring logo is not present, no doubt due to heavy restrictions on its use). Unfortunately, late Friday, the selected logo featured a luge themed design, less than 24 hours after Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili was killed during his last practice luge run before the opening ceremonies.
Bad taste or a ‘fitting tribute’?
Some Google users felt the design to be tasteless at best, exploitative at worst, while others saw the illustration as a fitting tribute to the young athlete. According to The Cleveland Leader, clicking on the logo took users to a search engine results page of 121,000 matches for Kumaritashvili’s name. Perhaps mindful of the heavy criticism that NBC was taking over their repetitive airing of the tragic crash, often in horrific slow motion, it appeared that Google saw a potential issue, and replaced the luge logo with one that featured a snowboarder. Today’s Google search page features a pair of ice-skaters (below).
Google hasn’t commented on the incident one way ot the other, but it’s probably safe to assume that the luge artwork was scheduled as part of an automatic algorithm and not something Google swapped in as the news of the accident spooled out across the internet. Probably a matter of unfortunate timing rather than a case of corporate insensitivity or exploitation.
Meanwhile, some ignored any potential issues completely, repeatedly trying to upload videos of the crash onto YouTube, only to have the videos yanked under a blanket IOC copyright claim. TV networks that chose to show the video, CNN and Canada’s CTV amongst them, were hammered on Twitter and Facebook with claims that they were exploiting a terrible event, and airing “accident porn” for the sake of ratings.
Hat tip: Mashable
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