Google has asked users for examples of linguistic discrimination carried out by its search engine, after receiving complaints on the subject from people making queries in Catalan. In a series of tweets this week, the Google Search Liaison profile (@searchliaison) appealed: “If anyone is comfortable sharing some examples where the results aren't in your query language, that will help us look into this more." "Let's see if there are improvements we can make," added the Twitter account. It is because of situations like this one that a campaign was born in summer 2022 to call for Google in Catalan: #GoogleEnCatalà, a move which was backed by the Catalan independence movement. The need for minoritized languages to take special measures to survive in the digital world has also been recognized by the Catalan government's AINA project.
Googles response in this new case was prompted by user David de Montserrat, who recently tweeted to the digital giant seeking an explanation about what was happening to his searches in Catalan: "Why are the main results in Spanish when I know for sure that there's information in Catalan and my browser is set in Catalan?" In a first tweet, Google responded that search results are generally returned "in the language used for the search and in the settings". But it also said that responses may be given in another language in "situations where two languages are widely spoken and understood", should its systems find "information that may be relevant". "To add, it is generally the case that we want to return content in the searched language. Apologies if this isn't happening," he concluded.
To add, it's generally the case we do regularly want to return content in the language somone searched for. Apologies if this isn't happening. If anyone is comfortable sharing some examples where the results aren't in your query language, that will help us look into this more.
— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) December 21, 2022
It was at this point that the company invited users to report cases where the search engine was discriminating against their choice of language in the results it provided, and given the language of the original query, Catalan Twitter was not slow to respond. Many users such as digital ethnographer Josep M. Ganyet shared screenshots of their search results. For example, some time ago he searched for information about the famous text "J'accuse...!" by the French writer Émile Zola. Having explained how he had every linguistic setting possible switched to Catalan in his preferences, the first thing that came up was the Spanish page of Wikipedia. Why not the Catalan version? "Gràcies", replied Google in Catalan, reporting that the case had been passed on to the team in charge of resolving the error. "Gràcies", "Gràcies", "Gràcies"... the company ended up responding in Catalan to all the users who sent in screenshots.
Catalan speakers have long demanded that Google take more care with their language. Last summer, the #GoogleEnCatalà campaign was born, which lamented "the lack of linguistic deployment of the digital giant in Catalan in recent years". While the campaign hailed the fact that services such as Gmail, Android and Google Docs are offered in Catalan, it reported that the company is in the process of abandoning these initiatives and thus #GoogleEnCatalà called on it to "take ethical and corporate responsibility". All in parallel with the Government's initiative to urge the company to increase the use of Catalan: #HolaCatalà.