By Lisa Baertlein
San Francisco - Google, under fire for refusing to exclude an anti-Semitic website from Internet search results, on Tuesday said it cannot deny users access because that would betray a vow to deliver unbiased information - no matter how it detests the site's message.
The offending website, Jewwatch.com, shows up as the first search result when users type "Jew" into Google's popular Internet search engine.
The site, which says its mission is to keep "close watch on Jewish communities and organisations worldwide," includes links to numerous hate groups and other anti-Semitic information.
'I certainly am very offended by the site' "I certainly am very offended by the site, but the objectivity of our rankings is one of our very important principles," Sergey Brin, who started Google with fellow Stanford University graduate student Larry Page in the late 1990s, told Reuters in a telephone interview.
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"We don't let our personal views - religious, political, ethical or otherwise - affect our results," said Brin, who added that he is Jewish.
Several weeks ago, a New York-based real estate investor started an online petition urging Google to remove the site.
As of Tuesday afternoon, the petition - at www.removejewwatch.com - had collected more than 50 000 signatures.
Brin, who has received numerous emails from friends who oppose the site, said the decision to continue including it in search results is about maintaining editorial integrity at Google.com, where results are determined by complex computer algorithms.
"We do not want to have people involved in showing the results for a query," Brin said.
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