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Google's Niantic Labs Apologises for Concentration Camps in Ingress Game

Google's Niantic Labs Apologises for Concentration Camps in Ingress Game

By Associated Press | Updated: 3 July 2015 18:08 IST

A Google subsidiary has apologised for making Nazi concentration camps part of a mobile role-playing game.

Niantic Labs says players of 'Ingress' can propose historic location and monuments for inclusion in the game, in which two factions use smartphones to battle for control of these sites. The German weekly Die Zeit reported Thursday some of the sites, known as 'portals,' were located within concentration camps such as Dachau and Sachsenhausen.

Gabriele Hammermann, director of the memorial site at Dachau, told the dpa news agency that Google's actions were a humiliation for victims and relatives of the Nazi camps.

In a statement to The Associated Press, Niantic Labs' founder John Hanke said the company has begun removing the offending sites from the game.

"After we were made aware that a number of historical markers on the grounds of former concentration camps in Germany had been added, we determined that they did not meet the spirit of our guidelines and began the process of removing them in Germany and elsewhere in Europe. We apologize that this happened."

Google has been embroiled in publicity debacles several times in recent months, from controversial public edits to its maps to its own software mislabelling users in a racist fashion.

Earlier this week, Google apologised for a flaw in Google Photos that led the new application to mistakenly label photos of black people as "gorillas." The company said it had fixed the problem and was working to figure out exactly how it happened.

Google in May apologised after it emerged that Google Maps searches using racist language pinpointed the White House, home of President Barack Obama. The offensive scenario was brought to light after it was noticed that searches combining a racial slur and the word "house" took people to the White House in Google's free online mapping service in some locations.

Back in April, a public edit to Google Maps changed a map near the Pakistani city of Rawalpindi to include a giant Android bot peeing over Apple's logo.

Written with agency inputs

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