After Twitter erupted over Prime Minister Narendra Modi's image showing up in a search for the "Top 10 criminals in India," Google apologised to the Indian leader on Wednesday.
"These results trouble us and are not reflective of the opinions of Google," the Internet search-engine said in a statement, IANS reported.
"Sometimes, the way images are described on the internet can yield surprising results to specific queries. We apologise for any confusion or misunderstanding this has caused. We're continually working to improve our algorithms to prevent unexpected results like this," Google said.
The other images which show up in an image search for the 10 criminals include Dawood Ibrahim, Osama Bin Laden, American gangster Al Capone, Sanjay Dutt, Hafiz Saeed, Bill Gates and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal.
On Wednesday, #Top10Criminals was the number one trend in India on Twitter, and it also trended worldwide.
Hey @google the Indian Prime Min listed in #Top10Criminals really? Time u changed ur algorithm,this is just so wrong. pic.twitter.com/ivhP7PdxVP
— Priyanka Chaturvedi (@priyankac19) June 3, 2015
Others felt that it wasn't a big deal.
Googling US #Top10Criminals pulls up, among others, Bill Gates, Eric Holder & George W. Bush. (Stop obsessing about silly things, India.)
— Sadanand Dhume (@dhume) June 3, 2015
Google said that the search result was due to a British daily which had an image of Modi and erroneous metadata, IANS reported.
In 2009, Google apologised to Michele Obama after a search for her name showed a picture of the American first lady altered to resemble a monkey.
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