Offensive Michelle Obama image removed

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Nov. 25 (UPI) -- A blog that ran a photograph of U.S. first lady Michelle Obama altered to make her appear ape-like removed the image Wednesday, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The distorted image created an international furor after it appeared on Google image searches, but the search engine had refused to remove it from its index due to free-speech concerns, the newspaper said.

The authors of the blog site "Hot Girls," which had posted the image, reportedly removed it Wednesday, inserting an apology written in Chinese and in broken English.

"I am very sorry for this article, and that this is the program automatically issued a document from the article," the Times quoted the English version as reading. "Do not the subject of race and politics make the discussion too radical and sincere hope that the world is very peaceful."

Google had said the altered image, denounced by critics as racist and vile, wouldn't be excluded from searches, because offensiveness isn't reason enough to remove an image, the Times reported.

"It's offensive to many people, but that alone is not a reason to remove it from our search index," Google Inc. spokesman Scott Rubin said Tuesday. "We have, in general, a bias toward free speech."

While the search-engine giant won't alter the process that places the image among its top results, it did add a flag with the headline "Offensive Search Results" above the picture, the Times said.

Rubin, while not commenting directly about the "Hot Girls" blog (developed by Google's Blogger tool), said the company's determination of hate speech relies on whether a site was "attacking or advocating attacks on a person."