Wednesday, November 19, 2014



Google has free speech right in search results, court confirms

A San Francisco court ruled last week that Google has the right to arrange its search results as it pleases, which confirms the company’s long-held position, while underscoring the stark difference in how U.S. and European authorities seek to regulate the search giant.

The new ruling, which is the first since 2007 to address Google’s rights under the First Amendment, came after a website called CoastNews argued that Google had unfairly pushed it far down in its search results – even though, CoastNews claimed, its site appeared at the top of results created by Bing and Yahoo. CoastNews suggested the poor rankings were because Google wanted to eliminate CoastNews as a potential competitor.

Google responded by filing an “anti-SLAPP” motion, a legal tactic used to quickly challenge lawsuits that seek to stifle free speech. In a one-paragraph ruling, Judge Ernest Goldsmith granted the request, saying CoastNews’ claims against Google related to “constitutionally protected activity.”

SOURCE

7 comments:

slinky said...

That is why I use multiple search engines when looking for something.

Anonymous said...

They can play favorites all they want. I can do the same.

Anonymous said...

It is notable that the FOX news coverage of a story is always lower down on the major search engines and msn, msnbc & huffington are at the top. This distribution is too consistent to be coincidence given the online following of FOX is greater than all others combined.

MDH

Anonymous said...

MDH

Ever heard of "quality not quantity" - FOX is more "News-oid" than even other US media organs.

Anonymous said...

Anon 3 59,
If that were true the other news networks would be found in a seach for the Democratic National committee.

Bird of Paradise said...

Here's even more reasons for america to total'y pull out of the United Nations and make the Euroweenie Union solve its own problems we'll help out during a disaster

Yoda said...

"Anonymous said...

They can play favorites all they want. I can do the same.

3:14 AM"

The Spirit of the Free Market that is, hmmmmmm?