Even Google has north-south bias; search result for 'south Indian masala' is proof

With the information boom in the 21st century, search engine giant Google is the go-to solution for any query. But with a mammoth task of processing zillions of bytes of data, the California-based company may sometimes make an error giving us strange and funny search results. 

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Google is not always smart. This is one such exceptional case where you stumble across a crazy result making us wonder what is wrong with the search engine giant.

Just google "north Indian masala" and check the results. What popped up? Chana masala or butter chicken or chaat masala, right? And now let's go down south. 

Do a similar search for "south Indian masala." Be prepared for the shock as the results are not the 'edible masala instead filled with pictures of women in skimpy clothes, especially south Indian actresses like Anuskha Shetty, Nayantara, Sneha, Hansika Motwani, and Namitha.

Netizens have been sharing the screenshots of Google's "sexist" result and even went to the extent of questioning the company's Indian-origin CEO, Sundar Pichai, to clarify. Congress MP Shashi Tharoor too has reacted to it calling it disgraceful on Twitter. "That's bizarre & disgraceful. @Google @sundarpichai can you explain -- & fix? [sic]," reads his tweet. "Googling #south #Indian #masala for your favourite #sambhaar will #shock you! [sic]," commented netizen Pratiba Raman.

But why is Google showing these "wrong" results?

However, we cannot totally blame Google for this goof up as its algorithm filters photos based on the keywords used for searching by the users that match with the tags given by netizens while uploading the images online. So, in this case, many have uploaded pics of South Indian actresses with the tags 'South Indian' and 'masala'. And that explains the underlying fact that it is the netizens who uploaded those photos with "masala" tags and the millions who searched with those keywords are the real "sexists", not Google.

"This insults only SouthIndian "men" who upload and view women as SouthIndianMasala. It's a search engine, not Jesus [sic]," tweets another social media user Aditya Misra‏.

Another goof up

Interestingly, if you type the Malayalam meaning of blowjob, which actually means "an act of oral sex performed on a man", the result shown by Google will make you do a double-take. According to the search engine giant, blowjob means "ashwasam", meaning relief in Malayalam.