14 DAY TRIAL // The Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish group that counters anti-Semitism, took the stand on a recent conference and brought forth examples of anti-Jewish hate material that was and still is freely available on the Internet. The means used to find this material? Google, of course.
The Israel Subsidiary Director of the Mountain View based giant, Meir Brand, explained later on that his company's free-access philosophy puts it on the sidelines in the race to eradicate cyberhate. "At Google, we have a bias in favor of people's right to free expression," he said. "Google is not and should not become the central arbiter of what does and does and does not appear on the Web. That's for elected governments and courts to decide", Brand said. He mentioned that Google removes results from its search index "only when required to by law", for example, when copyright infringement is an issue. In Germany and Austria, he said, Google removes Nazi content, which is against the law there.
However he admitted that there is such a problem and that Google did try to do something about it and as a result, a warning system for hate entries was instituted that takes viewers to a page warning that some of the search results may be offensive and noting that those opinions expressed reflects Google's views on the matter.
"The law [which combats hate speeches online] is simply one tool in the toolbox for dealing with hate speech," said Christopher Wolf, chairman of the International Network Against Cyberhate. "We (also) need the voluntary cooperation of the Internet industry. I applaud the efforts of Google," he said, but he called for more. He said social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook have been accused of hosting racist and religiously offensive content, and that must be dealt with.
Meir Brand concluded that Google after all is not the address for stopping online hate, being more like a starting point.