Google has recovered the picture of Britain's World War II leader Winston Churchill after it disappeared from search results, causing a backlash on social media.
"We've now resolved the issue that was preventing the picture of Sir Winston Churchill from being updated to appear in his knowledge panel and Knowledge Graph-related lists," Google Search Liaison said Sunday on Twitter.
"Again, this was not purposeful. Our apologies for the concerns caused."
Earlier, the tech giant explained the photo's removal by saying: "Images in such panels are automatically created updated. During an update, they can briefly disappear."
In this case, a bug in the system prevented the image from updating, it said, adding: "As a result, Churchill’s entry lacked an image from late April until this weekend, when the issue was brought to our attention resolved soon after."
Many Twitter users accused Google of "censoring British history," and called the removal of the photo "utterly ridiculous."
