Google censors swear words on Nexus One

Google keeping the Nexus One all sweetness and light
Google keeping the Nexus One all sweetness and light

Google has confirmed it's censoring bad words on the Nexus One as part of the voice/text input feature.

The search engine made a big deal about the fact you can now speak your text and emails rather than tapping them out (which sounds to us suspiciously like phone calls) but it's also now confirmed that it will be hash-ing out them cuss-words.

We had a good go at swearing our b*llcks off when we played with the phone, but only the less offensive words managed to get through, with the S- and F-bombs being coded out.

Do no evil, say no evil

"We filter potentially offensive or inappropriate results because we want to avoid situations whereby we might misrecognise a spoken query and return profanity when, in fact, the user said something completely innocent," said Google, according to Reuters.

It's actually a pretty good reason from Google - it's a bit easier to accidentally say something that sounds like a profanity than to accidentally type it - but we'd at least like the brand to be a bit hip and let you turn it off.

Or at the very least - instead of using #### to hide the offending article, get creative like spell-checkers in the '90s, thus creating messages like 'fact this, it's a load of shot and crop yeah?'.

Via Reuters

Gareth Beavis
Formerly Global Editor in Chief

Gareth has been part of the consumer technology world in a career spanning three decades. He started life as a staff writer on the fledgling TechRadar, and has grown with the site (primarily as phones, tablets and wearables editor) until becoming Global Editor in Chief in 2018. Gareth has written over 4,000 articles for TechRadar, has contributed expert insight to a number of other publications, chaired panels on zeitgeist technologies, presented at the Gadget Show Live as well as representing the brand on TV and radio for multiple channels including Sky, BBC, ITV and Al-Jazeera. Passionate about fitness, he can bore anyone rigid about stress management, sleep tracking, heart rate variance as well as bemoaning something about the latest iPhone, Galaxy or OLED TV.