14 DAY TRIAL // Google is getting into trouble again in France and it's over the same issues, people don't like things they find in the search results. This time, it's a variation on the theme, someone didn't like the Google suggestions.
A French insurance company, Lyonnaise de Garantie, didn't especially appreciate having the word "escroc," which means crook or swindler in French, suggested next to its name in Google searches.
Google uses previous searches to create suggestions. The most popular queries will be the one being suggested, so for the word "escroc" to be suggested, a lot of people had to search for it next to the company's name.
The fact that a lot of people searched for the term does not make the claim true or indicate that the company is shady, necessarily.
Of course, people seeing the suggestion might not necessarily assume that there is something wrong with the company either, but it could have an influence over potential customers though.
The French company sued Google to have it remove the suggestions. The company argued that it soiled its good name and that Google should clean up the suggestions.
The court sided with the French company, as it did on other if not all similar occasions in the country, and ordered Google to pay €50,000 ($64,670) in damages. It appears the court also ordered Google to remove the suggestion.
Google argued that the issue was strictly an algorithmic one and that it wasn't passing a "value judgement." However, the judge decided that Google had to stop and also suggested that it used people to weed out unsavory suggestions.
Of course, that would not be feasible technically, the volume of data is simply to big for any form of human control. At best, Google could remove certain words from the suggestions, it already does that for certain piracy related terms, but that would make the feature less useful.