The legalis.net report says the managing editor of Google.fr and Google Inc. has been sentenced for defamation of a person. Google is required to remove all “related searches” or face a 500 euro/day fine.
Interesting to note that the Court of Paris said Google did not show good faith. The search engine company had argued that because their search is “automated” and determined by “objective factors” they could not be held liable for results. This was not accepted as a defense.
Le TGI de Paris a refusé d’admettre l’absence d’implication de Google du fait du caractère automatique de son système. Entre autres arguments, il a noté, comme dans le jugement du 4 décembre 2009, que Google ne prend pas en compte certains libellés de recherche lancés par les internautes qui pourraient offenser un grand nombre d’entre eux, ce qui suppose nécessairement qu’un tri préalable est fait entre les requêtes enregistrées dans la base de données. De même, Google permet au public de signaler des requêtes qui ne devraient pas être suggérées, laissant supposer qu’une intervention humaine est possible. Sur l’atteinte à la liberté d’expression qu’il y aurait à supprimer telles associations de mots, la 17ème du TGI a adopté une position différente de celle exprimée par le juge des référés dans son ordonnance du 22 juillet 2010. Cette fonctionnalité a-t-elle remarqué a pour seule utilité d’éviter à l’utilisateur de saisir la totalité d’une requête et « qu’en état de cause la suppression éventuelle de tel ou tel des thèmes de recherche proposés ne priverait aucun d’entre eux de la faculté de disposer, mais à leur seule initiative et sans y être incité par quiconque, de toutes les références indexées par le moteur de recherches correspondant à telle association de mots avec tel patronyme ou telle raison sociale de leur choix ».
The first thing that comes to mind is that Google has historically argued the opposite of their defense in this case. They have said they have a uniquely designed engine that has been tuned for better results.
It is from their particular algorithm based on their superior engineering that you get results you would want more than from other search engines. They are in the drivers’ seat when they say they can tune their engine to present results that are good instead of bad, or popular instead of unpopular, or objective instead of biased.
No matter what you call it, they have been taking credit for results with the tool that they programmed. Now that results were found to be objectionable by a person I find it odd to see them argue in court that they just passively ride in the back seat. This is like a newspaper saying they have no control over the content they publish after marketing themselves as an accurate source of news.
More to the point, the tool did not malfunction. Google did not claim someone broke in or modified the results without authorization. Instead they said the results were the natural byproduct of public opinion that they just pass along, as if their search engine adds no value at all. Easy to see how the court reacted — protecting individuals from defamation should be within the capabilities of a search engine, just like protection from other forms of harm have been developed.
Google’s SafeSearch Filtering says it “blocks web pages containing explicit sexual content from appearing in search results”. They should have presented a defense along these lines rather than try to cook up some weird concept of universal machine-based objectivity.