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?
Todd
wrote @ 9:55 am on March 23, 2007:Google should not have to filter any suggestions…they don’t filter search results, why start now?
Mike Bogo
wrote @ 10:05 am on March 23, 2007:The issue is that Google is a respected authority, and for it to suggest something does carry weight - to have it suggest illegal activities is, in my opinion, a negative act for its reputation, especially when the user is searching for non-illegal information.
If someone is searching for “cracks,” then sure, show the information. These people probably know what they’re doing.
But what about the person that has no idea what a crack is, or whether it’s illegal, and just searches for “ServersCheck.” Google suddenly says “Hey, maybe you want ‘ServersCheck cracks’”, and the user, being ignorant of what a crack is, goes and starts downloading and implementing cracks without realizing that it’s ever illegal.