French Courts Once Again Confused About Google Suggest; Blame Google For Suggested Searches
from the gotta-understand-the-algorithm dept
Not again. Earlier this year, we wrote about a couple of lawsuits in France involving companies that wanted to blame Google for the results that pop up via Google Suggest (the feature that simply looks at what you're typing, and suggests the most popular searches based on what you've typed). Tragically, we noted that the courts wanted to find Google liable for these suggestions, and it looks like yet another French court has made that same mistake. This is, quite clearly, blaming Google for what its users are doing. The algorithm for Google Suggest is just taking the aggregate results of what people are actually searching on, and using that to make suggestions. There's no editorial control by Google, and yet this court not only found Google liable for those suggestions, but ordered the removal of all the "offending" query suggestions. In this case, it involved a guy who had been convicted for "corruption of a minor," who got upset "because the plaintiff's name was returned in response to queries on search terms such as rape, satan worshipper, and other things." At some point, you hope that courts and politicians will understand the basics of how technology works, but it seems like we may be waiting a long, long time.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Filed Under: france, google suggest, liability
Companies: google
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Funny...
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The next question is, so what? We read newspapers (or used to) for their editorial decisions.
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my favs
-black people
-chinese people
-girls
I think we should sue Google because they are racist and sexist. But wait, whats that you say? Your telling me the only reason those come up is because they are most popular?
More people are afraid of black people than sharks and other stuff like that?
Sounds like we need to sue society, not Google.
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That's right: people really *have* been typing things like "how do I get my sister pregnant"...
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People in France complained about a query equivalent to "Blacks are" which, on google.com shows no suggested results.
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I will put a gun on my garden gate, that will automatically fire a bullet somewhere in the street each time my neighbour's dog barks. Now I cannot be sued if somebody gets hurt?
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Controlling Google Auto Suggest
If anyone has been able to game the Google Suggest, I'm all ears.
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