21 July 2009 | Author: L. Sutherland Head of Media Content

Google isn't liable for its search results

In a landmark ruling for UK defamation law, a high court judge in London has ruled that Google is not liable for defamatory comments that appear in news articles, blogs and forums displayed in its search results.

According to the Guardian, the case was brought by London-based Metropolitan International Schools against Google US and Google UK. The distance learning courses school was unhappy with some comments in forums that had made their way into the search engine's results giving the company less than favourable reviews. MIS launched legal action in the hopes that Google would be liable for the reproduction of such defamatory comments.

Google, of course, contested this accusation. The Guardian reports that Mr Justice Eady ruled on Friday that Google was a facilitator rather than a publisher in a landmark decision. He said: "When a snippet is thrown up on the user's screen in response to his search, it points him in the direction of an entry somewhere on the web that corresponds, to a greater or lesser extent, to the search terms he has typed in.

"It is for him to access or not, as he chooses. [Google] has merely, by the provision of its search service, played the role of a facilitator."

The judge did however make it clear that Google should have a responsibility for blocking or taking down data if it was alerted to the fact that it could be libellous.

Given the gargantuan task that would be trawling search results to remove defamatory remarks, the ruling will undoubtedly be welcomed not only be Google, but by all its search competitors too.

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