Google Loses Lawsuit in France over 'Suggest' Feature

A French appeals court has overrun a previous decision by a lower court and found against Google in a lawsuit involving the Google Suggest feature. The judge ordered the search engine to remove a term which he believed was libelous against the Centre National Privé de Formation a Distance (CNFDI), the organization that filed the suit. Google didn't say if it would comply with the decision or fight it in another appeal.

The decision is the conclusion of the second stage of a lawsuit filed by CNFDI which was offended by the first term Google suggested when entering a query for CNFDI on the search page. Google.fr, the French local version of the search engine, suggested "CNFDI anrnaque" which translates as "scam" or "swindle." The organization sued Google for libel in a French criminal court.

Initially, the court sided with Google finding that it had no responsibility over the content its users create. Furthermore, it claimed that forcing Google to remove the term would be detrimental to free speech and citizen rights. It also believed that the fact that the term was being suggested showed that people are interested in that particular query all the more reason not to remove it.

Google Suggest uses an automated algorithm to generate the suggestions based on the most searched for terms by the users and on the query being typed. The most popular queries appear higher up in the suggestion box. In the CNFDI case, the high placement of the suggestion indicates that a lot of users have been doing searches like that concerned perhaps with the legitimacy of the educational institution.

The appeal court had a different opinion and now ordered Google to remove the suggestion. It dismissed Google's argument that the feature is completely automated, saying that the search engine already enables users to report offensive or inaccurate suggestions. The court claimed that the term "arnaque" does fall under the 'offensive' category and therefore should be removed. At the time of writing, the term is still the first suggestion on the French version of the site.