MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Sept. 4 (UPI) -- Shocked Google users took to social media after discovering the "direct answers" service gives an anti-Semetic response to the question, "Who runs Hollywood?"

The "direct answers" service, which uses an infobox to share information from websites to answer the questions posed to the search engine by users, was found to be bringing up the answer "Jews" when asked about "who runs Hollywood."


The infobox contains information from a July 14 article in the New Observer, a website that purports to be "designed to present current affairs without the spin of the controlled media."

A Google representative told The Guardian that technicians were working to remove the offending answer.

"We assure you that the views expressed by such sites are not in any way endorsed by Google," the representative said.

Google said the search engine's page-rank algorithm gave the New Observer article "authority" due to the high number links to the site from other users.

The "Jews" answer was still being given by the search engine early Friday morning, but it had been removed by 11:30 a.m.