Frankly, I think Google is the victim here. It looks a lot like what a large company has to do each time a bunch of crackpots take it upon themselves to represent the Hurt Feelings of Every Member of [their minority].
This is the sort of political correctness that makes me want to puke. This has to be the gem:
> So why is a search for “Jew” different? One reason is that the word “Jew” is often used in an anti-Semitic context.
You mean to tell me that people who hate people of Israeli ethnicity would actually use the word by which that ethnicity is named? I thought they just called them those-who-shall-not-be-named or something.
Of course some of the results of a search for "jew" will be anti-semitic, or will look anti-semitic at least for someone. Some people aren't smart enough, or interested enough, to understand that it's not Google's fault that some people don't like people of Jewish descent and choose to make their opinion public.
tl ; dr: Google doesn't seem to consider the word "Jew" to be offensive; Google looks like it tries to explain not-so-computer-literate users that the pages it indexes have nothing to do with their own opinions and options, just like it indexes both the pages that explain when abortion should be an option and the ABORTION IS CRIME crackpottery.
Unfortunately, it looks like the superficial and easily-inflamed are collateral damage here :-).
"jew " autocompletes to "jew jokes", the results of which include a couple of racist jokes sites, one of which has the words "Nazi Lauck" in the title.
And yes, the OP title is quite silly.
To much risk of committing libel/slander and as your algorithm (and not your users) makes a conscious choice what to display you lose the common carrier status.
Sure, it sometimes throws up surprising suggestions, but people are starting to recognize that it just reflects the world out there.
And no the average civilian doesn't know anything about Machine Learning at all the vast majority woudl consider its Googles POV - Perception is everything as the Macpherson report pointed out.
Google wrote those algorithms which is the problem from a legal perspective.