Google delivers elegant response to criticism of its poppy
The IndependentThe best of Voices delivered to your inbox every week - from controversial columns to expert analysis Sign up for our free weekly Voices newsletter for expert opinion and columns Sign up to our free weekly Voices newsletter SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy The response by a Google spokesman to criticism of its Remembrance Day poppy should go down in the Spokesperson's Bible of Tactful Putdowns and Restrained Dismissiveness. Earlier today Labour MP Gerry Sutcliffe said that the small poppy displayed below Google's search bar was an insufficiently "spectacular" tribute to Britain's war dead: "Around Remembrance Day it is demeaning not to have something that is spectacular". Another MP, Tory Julian Brazier, praised Bing, a rival search engine to Google, for its own, larger remembrance day tribute, saying: "Well done Bing for making such a clear and unmistakeable gesture". The Google spokesman stepped into this fraught area with a polite, calm and marginally patronising riposte, worth repeating: "We try to be sensitive that a doodle is sometimes not the most appropriate way to recognise certain events, especially those that are more somber in nature."
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