Thirty-two years ago, on June 4, 1989, Chinese troops killed and arrested thousands of pro-democracy protesters in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, putting

Tiananmen Square Tank Man vanishes from Microsoft Bing, DuckDuckGo, other search engines – even in America

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2021-06-05 00:00:04

Thirty-two years ago, on June 4, 1989, Chinese troops killed and arrested thousands of pro-democracy protesters in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, putting an end to demonstrations that began that April.

Microsoft's Bing has no memory of an iconic moment from that day: there's no record of Tank Man – the lone protester who faced down a column of tanks – in Bing's image search index.

The Tank Man ... A Beijing demonstrator blocks the path of an armored convoy along the Avenue of Eternal Peace near Tiananmen Square in June 1989. Source: Getty

At the time this article was written today, searching for "tank man" in Bing Images (Safe Search off, with or without quotes) here in the United States of America returned this response:

“This is due to an accidental human error and we are actively working to resolve this,” a Microsoft spokesperson told The Register.

Curiously DuckDuckGo Images (Safe Search off), which relies on Bing for its search index, also had no memory of the event when asked about "tank man."