Michelle's 'racist' picture reappears online

The image has now been reappearing at the top of the results when the words “Michelle Obama” are put into Google’s picture search engine.

Despite complaints that it is “racist”, the US Internet giant has refused to remove the offensive image from its picture search listings, citing its commitment to “free expression”, the media reported.

Instead, Google is running an ad next to the picture which explains how its search engine works and concedes that sometimes the results could be “offensive”. However, the image was eventually withdrawn by Hot Girls, a blog hosted by the Google-owned Blogger, on which it was appearing in November last year.