Google Suggest Promotes Piracy?
Or so a Belgian company named ServersCheck argued in a claim made May 2006. Google won this one, but I’m not so sure it should have. All the claimant wanted was for Google not to suggest “ServersCheck Cracks” or “ServersCheck Serials” when searching for “ServersCheck”, without any financial damages, making it one of the most reasonable lawsuits against Google so far (unlike the KinderStart case).
A Belgian court dismissed a lawsuit filed by a company that said a feature for Google Inc.’s search engine offers up password-cracking tools and serial numbers to unlock their software.
ServersCheck BVBA, based in Leuven, Belgium, charged that Google’s Suggest feature could drive users who were interested in their network monitoring software to pirated versions, said Maarten Van Laere, CEO.
The lawsuit, filed in May 2006, sought to make Google modify Suggest to not offer up piracy-related terms but did not seek financial damages.
The question as to whether Google should filter out this kind of suggest is obvious to me: absolutely. It’s one thing to provide information people are specifically looking for, it’s another to “suggest” illegal activities when looking for legitimate products. However, should Google be held legally responsible for making sure that this doesn’t occur?
