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From SFGate.com:

Confronted with the return of an offensive image of First Lady Michelle Obama to the top of its image search engine, Google is now using some of its own ad space to offer an explanation on how its results are determined.

Search Engine Land reported that Google first dealt with the image last week, when the company removed it saying that the Web site hosting the picture was a conduit for malware. But the image is back and ranking high, this time hosted in a different Web site. The fact that it hasn’t been taken down suggests that this time the Web site is not in violation of Google’s removal policies.

Stuck again with an unpleasant situation, the Mountain View-company wants to wash its hands and, to do so, it is using a valuable piece of its online real estate space to tell users that “sometimes our search results can be offensive. We agree.”

“The beliefs and preferences of those who work at Google, as well as the opinions of the general public, do not determine or impact our search results,” the company wrote.

“[…] Google views the integrity of our search results as an extremely important priority. Accordingly, we do not remove a page from our search results simply because its content is unpopular or because we receive complaints concerning it.”