A crudely altered photograph of Michelle Obama as a monkey will not be removed from the Google Images search index, despite complaints that the depiction is racist and offensive.

The image, which often comes up as the first result on a Google image search of her name, is posted on a blog entitled "Hot Girls," which is hosted by the Google-owned blog service Blogger.

"It's offensive to many people, but that alone is not a reason to remove it from our search index," Google Inc. spokesman Scott Rubin told the L.A. Times on Tuesday. "We have, in general, a bias toward free speech."

Rubin said the image wouldn't be removed from the index unless Google determined the blog violated Blogger's terms of service. Those rules include a ban on hate speech, which the agreement defines as "content that promotes hate or violence towards groups based on race, ethnicity, religion, disability, gender, age, veteran status or sexual orientation/gender identity." Rubin said that an image alone might not be enough to trigger the removal.

A web site containing the same image was recently removed from Google's main search results, but only because the site was determined be distributing malware to unsuspecting visitors.