A viral viral image has been going viral which says that Kannada is the ugliest language of India. Google is India’s most used search engine and the whole controversy began from a search result. Kannada which is spoken by approximately 40-60 million people in India is the regional language of the state Karnataka. It is obvious that most of the people were offended from it.
Background of the Controversy
A website named debtconsolidationsquad.com which now redirects to debtconsolidationsquestion.com had posted a list of 15 question and answer to languages in India which also included the easiest and most beautiful languages. This website also had answered the question of ugliest language of India to which the answer was Kannada.
An IT company based in Bengaluru with the name ‘ThincNext’ also started a petition on Change.Org to remove that particular search result from Google. As of now, more than 18,000 people have signed the petition and it is expected to reach its goal of 25,000 signatories.
As more and more people saw this petition and controversy, there was a lot of heat and anger seen among the political leaders including the state minister Aravind Limbavali. He said, “Kannada has a history of its own, having come into existence as many as 2,500 years ago. The language has been the pride of Kannadigas through the ages.”
Former chief minister HD Kumaraswamy had also expressed outrage over the incident. In a series of tweets, he sought to know why Google “behaves in an irresponsible manner”. BJP’s Bengaluru Central MP P C Mohan, slammed Google and asked it to apologise. Sharing the screenshot of the search on his Twitter handle, Mohan said Karnataka is home to the great Vijayanagara empire and the Kannada language has a rich heritage, a glorious legacy and a unique culture.
President AAP Youth Wing, Karnataka, Mukund Gowda, shared a letter on Facebook which he wrote to Google India Vice President Sanjay Gupta. He wrote, “I take a serious exception to the search results shown by Google when someone searches for ‘Ugliest Languages in India’. Unfortunately, ‘Kannada’ is the answer which comes up on the screen.“
He further wrote, “While there is no Ugly Language in India, Google should have been sensitive to even show any result for this search. I believe this is the result gathered based on inputs and user experience that is logged as answered by some anti-Kannada users of Google.“
Google’s Reply to the Kannada Language Controversy
Google released a statement and stated the reasons as follows, “Search isn’t always perfect. Sometimes, the way content is described on the Internet can yield surprising results to specific queries. We know this is not ideal, but we take swift corrective action when we are made aware of an issue and are continually working to improve our algorithms. Naturally, these are not reflective of the opinions of Google, and we apologize for the misunderstanding and hurting any sentiments.”
It is the issue of algorithms and the way pages are indexed. Technically it was something not done by Google intentionally and these types of controversies are not new. Sometime ago, if you had asked Google who is the biggest idiot, the search results showed ‘Donald Trump’ which enraged Trump supporters too. we hope Google can find a better solution for these type of search results.