BAD WORDS AT GOOGLE.

Jamie Dubs at Free Art and Technology has posted Google’s Official List of Bad Words: “If you type ‘fuck’ or ‘shit’ into Google’s new What Do You Love? service you are adorably redirected to ‘kittens’ instead. I dug through their source code and extracted Google’s complete list of unspeakables, embedded below.” It’s a pretty funny list; oddly, as one of the commenters points out, “God” is on it. Why does Google prefer that you love kittens rather than God? Never mind, don’t answer, I don’t think I want to know.
While we’re on the subject of Google-related oddities, here is the worst-scanned book I’ve ever seen (Wohlgemeynte Gedanken über den Dannemarks-Gesundbrunnen, by Johan Gottschalk Wallerius and Johann Daniel Denso; it’s the whole book, not just that page—scroll down and see for yourself).
Update (2012). I’m pleased to see they’ve rescanned the book and it’s now perfectly readable.

Comments

  1. Apparently they fixed it.

  2. It’s not poorly scanned–that’s just what Fraktur looks like.

  3. From a cursory reading I found no non-English words in the list, with the sole exception of Portuguese “buceta” (cunt). Why?

  4. Looks like Google’s engaged in a bit of an arms race with the boooobs-lengtheners.
    And that book in the second half of your post is definitely best paged through while listening to Jimi Hendrix.

  5. arms race with the boooobs-lengtheners.
    Yes, but they missed “boooooobs”.
    I don’t know why “flange” is on the list. But then there are many things I don’t know.

  6. http://www.wdyl.com/#God seems to return God-related results rather than kittens (same for other-cased versions). The list might not be strictly canonical.

  7. Why does Google prefer that you love kittens rather than God?

    Not that many wars have been fought in the name of kitties.
    In fact, I think it would be conducive to world peace if someone could develop kitten bombs in place of cluster ditto.

  8. It seems to drop хуй, when I paste it in. Hmm

  9. I agree with Matt, die Gesundbrunnen is a suitable psychedelic aide-tripoir. By the way, in a recent novel by Nothomb I found the French verb triper, in various conjugated forms, meaning “to trip out”. The Petit Robert has no verb, only (le) trip (homonymous with (la) tripe, of course – how could I have expected otherwise …)

  10. I should mention that die Gesundbrunnen is the plural of der Gesundbrunnen, neither of which I meant when I typed “die” Gesundbrunnen. I guess I was half-thinking something like die Gesundbrunnen-Jimi-Hendrix Idee von Matt.

  11. I see I can still use “quim”. Though it’s much too pleasing a word to use for cursing.

  12. mollymooly says

    “I don’t know why “flange” is on the list.”
    Blame phonaesthetics or Urban Dictionary. But if Google is using Urban Dictionary as a source all words will soon be blacklisted.

  13. The British politician Ed Balls also runs into the Google-censor and redirects to kittens …

  14. “Not that many wars have been fought in the name of kitties.”
    At least one has.

  15. Alas, the book I just finished copyediting calls that account of the battle “preposterous.”

  16. What, you think there’s something fishy about an account of the battle written 700 years later with no intermediary source?

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