Earlier, I blogged about how the blend of Google Images and images from Google News caused some to wonder if Google was censoring pictures of US soldiers involved in the
Abu Ghraib prison torture scandal: Stale & Split Image Databases Fuel Google Conspiracy Theories.
Yesterday, Nathan from InsideGoogle spotted what seemed to be a new change
to Google Images. Any images coming from Google News are identified at the top of the results, with a "Images from Google News" heading. You can currently see this in a search
on arafat.
That’s a good way to help people understand why some pictures might move in to, then out of, Google Images. But it also raises new questions about Google’s explanation over
the missing photos.
The implementation isn’t new. Comments in Nathan’s blog explain that the system has been going since April. You can see a screenshot from back them via Google Blogoscoped:
Google Images Merges With News.
Given that the system’s been in place for months, it should have been pretty clear to the person viewing the scandal photos in Google Images that they came out of Google
News. However, there’s no indication that this was the case. Instead, it sounds like they were just Google Images listings.
I’m checking again with Google for any further explanation.