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Early adopters of Google’s Nexus One phone just can’t catch a break. First, some of them overpaid<\/a>. Then customers reported iffy 3G connectivity<\/a>. And at least one had problems getting a dead phone replaced<\/a>. It’s enough to make you scream obscenities at your phone. Don’t bother. Google has included an odd feature as part of the phone’s voice-to-text function: When it transcribes your speech, it automatically censors any curse words you utter. F*&k!<\/p>\n Reuters was first on the scene, and commented that “the phone is a bit of a prig.”<\/p>\n Try uttering a curse word into the Nexus One, and the well-mannered device will automatically replace the offensive expression with a string of # symbols.<\/p>\n Thus, a jocular text message inquiring about a buddy’s whereabouts is transcribed as “Hey #### where are you?” on the Nexus One; A spirited rejoinder to a dubious assertion becomes “that’s bull #### and you know it.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Reuters spoke to Google, and the company responded in a statement that the enforced bowdlerization was indeed intentional:<\/p>\n “We filter potentially offensive or inappropriate results because we want to avoid situations whereby we might misrecognize a spoken query and return profanity when, in fact, the user said something completely innocent,” said Google.<\/p>\n “Ultimately our goal is to return results that show exactly what you said, and we’re constantly working to improve the technology to better fit our users’ needs,” the statement continued.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Until the technology improves, if you want to send a text message about that f*&king awesome band you saw, or call bulls&#t on a bogus informercial, you’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way, with your fingers. Just not the middle one; we hear Google has a way to block that too.<\/p>\n