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French Court Frowns On Autocomplete, Tells Google To Remove Searches
New submitter Lexx Greatrex writes with this excerpt from Ars Technica: "Google had been sued by insurance company Lyonnaise de Garantie, which was offended by search results including the word 'escroc,' meaning crook, according to a story posted Tuesday by the Courthouse News Service. 'Google had argued that it was not liable since the word, added under Google Suggest, was the result of an automatic algorithm and did not come from human thought,' the article states. 'A Paris court ruled against Google, however, pointing out that the search engine ignored requests to remove the offending word... In addition to the fine, Google must also remove the term from searches associated with Lyonnaise de Garantie.'"
Can it be added back in later if we find out that they really are crooks?
Corporate origin. Government sponsorship. Plain and simple.
...many other here will say it, but what would the French Court say if Google simply removed Lyonnaise de Garantie's website from *all* their results....
Every time someone rolls out something horrible like this they think it's a wunnerful thing. Well, not tal all of us. I find this stuff causes me to make typos far more often in searches, because of the distraction.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Who woulda thunk it.
Show some balls google.
Disable everything that is google in France for 1 day and blame it on the court. In 3-6 weeks, when you have a valid fix, silently put that in.
Whenever French users search for "Lyonnaise de Garantie," Google should just return "Your search - Lyonnaise de Garantie - did not match any documents." And then a list of competing insurance companies.
There! Problem solved!
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
You want corporate censorship? You got it. Be careful what you wish for.
I have a thought. Google can block France completely...
I don't know whether Lyonnaise de Garantie are crooks, but this is the mother of Streisand effects.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Crooks, that is? One really has to wonder how many people they had to screw over for this auto-complete suggestion to be show up. That sort of autocomplete result is usually an indication of a fairly large number of people using those words in the same general context. Even now, the sixth suggestion for them ends with problème....
Maybe Google's argument should not have been that Google wasn't responsible, but rather that it's not libel if it is true (I'm assuming that this is the case under French law) or that it is not possible to defame something that is already a disgrace....
More to the point, maybe the company in question should focus more on improving their image by actually improving their customer service instead of just metaphorically wallpapering over the rotting walls. If enough people think they are crooks to cause the Google search results to suggest this for several years in a row, that strongly suggests a very serious problem with the way they do business. I'm not saying that Lyonnaise de Garantie is a bunch of crooks, but they clearly have a serious image problem, and you can't cure that kind of problem by trying to sue people into silence. Doing so can only result in the Streisand Effect.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Now "Lyonnaise de Garantie escroc" is a valid Google term, because I may have heard about this ruling and want to read more about it. So, auto-suggesting as such is highly relevant to me.
Frankly, I like having the suggestions pop up (and not just for the fun factor). There have been times that a suggested result reveals the truth of something when the marketing and SEO have worked to whitewash the search results themselves. When people run into problems with a product, they will search for their problem rather than the marketing speak. I wish I could give my real examples, but I'm contractually/legally obligated not to. I'll contrive a working one instead (though the contrived one is not as solid as my real examples...).
Contrived example: Pop the words "MS Antivirus" into google search. "MS Antivirus" is a name of a piece of malware posing as security software. For me, the third suggested search is "MS Antivirus malware". Without having that there, the search results for "MS Antivirus" that declare it as malware are all below the fold. The results for "MS Antivirus malware" have the wikipedia entry for the malware itself as the first result.
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
1. Do enough bad things that people in your country start adding their word for "crook" to searches with your trademark
2. Sue Google instead of fixing your reputation problem
3. ?????
4. Profit!
That includes searches like "crook Lyonnaise de Garantie" and "is Lyonnaise de Garantie a crook?".
I'm rather curious to see what Google does.
If that company just ignored it, no one would care. But filing a lawsuit has brought it to the attention of the internets. They are probably going to experience what I call the Santorum effect.
Are Lyonnaise de Garantie escroc?
I don't know whether Lyonnaise de Garantie are crooks, but I do know that they tried to censor the web to remove any association between Lyonnaise de Garantie and crooks, or as the French say, Lyonnaise de Garantie and escroc. Which is interesting. I wonder what Ms Streisand in her lovely beach house has to say about it all.
I'm French, I didn't even know Lyonnaise de Garantie, and I sure as hell will never subscribe an insurance with them.
So Lyonnaise de Garantie's website no longer shows up on searches for escroc. But I bet a fortune that "Lyonnaise de Garantie sues to stop being called escrocs" news reports will soon be one of the top search results for "escroc".
After all, I doubt the ruling covers news stories written, published and hosted by third parties.
If you're on Facebook, post a new status message "Lyonnaise de Garantie escroc" - be sure it's flagged "Public" rather than "Friends only" or whatever. Tweet it too, if you're so inclined.
#DeleteChrome
Hey look! It's another one of Apple Troll bonch's alt accounts?
http://slashdot.org/~bonch ...
http://slashdot.org/~Overly%20Critical%20Guy
The search engine project pushed by the French government?
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Just sent some spam via http://www.lyonnaise-de-garantie.com/contact.php
Lyonnaise de Garanti ESCROC Lyonnaise de Garanti ESCROC Lyonnaise de Garanti ESCROC Lyonnaise de Garanti ESCROC Lyonnaise de Garanti ESCROC Lyonnaise de Garanti ESCROC Lyonnaise de Garanti ESCROC Lyonnaise de Garanti ESCROC Lyonnaise de Garanti ESCROC Lyonnaise de Garanti ESCROC
Sorry but..
Fuck the French.
Just my ignorant opinion.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B - D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
No, not like that.*
*Well, maybe.
Posterity, my posterior.
Doesn't appear to... Yet.
By the way, I forgot to mention this in the last post, but Samuel Miller, the DOJ prosecutor who went after Microsoft also considers them a monopoly. So your statement about Microsoft is somewhat amusing in restrospect.
"Sufferin' succotash."
The parent post is written by NicknameOne/Galestar/flurp, a crazed anti-Apple troll who thinks EVERYONE is part of a conspiracy if they're even remotely critical of his employer, Google. If you look through his posting history, you see he even admits to using open proxies.
To prevent escrocs, crook, idiot, fool, and any other negative comment from completing "Lyonnaise de Garantie", Google should remove "Lyonnaise de Garantie" from its autocompleter.
Google most definitely has a monopoly in web advertising...it's why they're being investigated in Europe for antitrust. The DOJ lead who went after Microsoft ten years ago considers Google a monopoly, and Eric Schmidt told the U.S. Senate that Google was "in the area" of being a monopoly. I think there's so much resistance to admitting it on Slashdot because "monopoly!" was an anti-Microsoft rallying cry for so many years, and to put Google in the same boat kind of stings a little.
I have to say, though, that watching the moderators attack anyone who even dares utter the words "monopoly" and "Google" in the same sentence is both amusing and sad. How many ongoing investigations are there of Google right now, particularly in Europe? I mean, come on. It's not trolling to point out that Google is friggin' huge.
in 3, 2, 1...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
That's not true. The autocompleter put those two terms together because many web pages (created from human thought) and/or searches (created from human thought) used those two terms together.
There was human thought, but it wasn't by Google employees, so liability is being misapplied.
They really need to get a life. If Google offends you then DON'T USE GOOGLE. No one is forcing you.
Is this really what this world is turning into? A bunch of whiny pansies.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Sounds like a limitation of Google's ranking algorithm to me. Shouldn't they fix the ranking, rather than rely on an extral UI layer (aka "suggested search", that may or may not be turned on for a user)?
If you notice incorrect rankings, you should probably report them to Google, so they can tweak the signal weights.
Lyonnaise de Garantie is the problem here, not the French government. Sure, this is a bad ruling, but that happens all the time in court systems. Simply put, they are trying to litigate away someone's opinion of them. I find this sort of behavior to be the most base form of bullying, and I feel obligated to contribute to the 'Streisand Effect'...
In my opinion, the French firm Lyonnaise de Garantie to a man, are worse than crooks. They are the most foul and debase degenerates, slime of the lowest order. Fuck them, they are pox on the world and a waste of air. To call them a pack of worthless cunts would bring shame to roving packs of worthless cunts. Jean-Luc Berho, the VP of the company cannot bring himself to orgasm without unless he chokes a dog to death. Jean-Jacques Olivié, the president of that slithering pack of reptilians, cannot be trusted not to accidentally choke himself to death if left unattended with a stale croissant. May he catch syphilis from a drunken Armenian mule. Insurance frauds could learn something from these thieves, as could lamprey and other tubular blood sucking vermin.
But, hey, I could be wrong. After all, it is just an opinion.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
I was going to suggest something similar: remove their physical footprint from that bizarre regime's jurisdiction & put a 'Sorry' page up in place of Google.fr. (French users could go to another French-language-centric Google incarnation, and Google could still index France-specific results from elsewhere.)
Pi Ran Out
Now that they decided to sue because of this and the word "escroc" is posted on so many pages on the Internet along with "Lyonnaise de Garantie," it is now absolutely VALID to have a search of "escroc" return "Lyonnaise de Garantie."
So, though their argument WAS valid beforehand, it's ridiculous to force them to remove results now because their own actions made the search result into a valid one...
Also, perhaps they should look into their business practices? Maybe there's a reason that word came up with their company? The phrase "me thinks thou doth protest too much" comes to mind.
P.S. - I know that quote above is one that started out as a misquote and then its misquote ended up being famous even though it's an error...it's the misquote that's valid for these purposes, though...
Who gives a crap what those commies think? I frown on hairy armpits, tell les femmes to remove that nasty.
Are you sure you know what the word communist means? I doubt it.
Start putting into search engines the following words. "Lyonnaise de Garantie escroc crooks ladrones vigaristas k gian oplichters Gauner ". When that is high enough index on the search site, it will show up as an auto-complete option for the company. (translations of "crooks" made possible by google translate).
Google, remove them completely! No more reasons to complain...
YUP no prob we'll remove all referances ot you, your company and anyhting aobut you and your products and business. NO PROBLEM
and to boot for a month we're halving costs for insurance companies ot advertisie on google google + etc except of course that company we can't use name or whatever.
yup that works
For profit insurance companies always lose in comparison to mutual companies.That profit margin has got to come from somewhere.
For-profit insurance companies are crooked by design and run and staffed by blood-sucking larcenous cretins.
Insurance should be a strictly not-for-profit business, period.
Come the revolution, insurance "executives" had better pray that there is only enough rope in supply to take care of Wall Street executions, er, "executives".
They are two different things. The suggest search is accumulated from the phrases people search with. The results are governed by the search rankings.
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
...posting to remove a misapplied moderation. How about either (a) an undo option or (b) a moderation widget that's robust against bumped elbows, Slashdot?
Is that when I am going to buy a product or use a service from a company I do not know much about, I will google it. If I find many negative responses then I am less likely to trust that product or company.
This sounds a little like sweeping bad rubbish under the carpet and turning customers into mushrooms...waait this sounds like what happened with the GFC people sweeping and hiding bad shit under the carpet.
Honesty and openness I value, and I can trust(just a little) a company a bit more if they at least admit they screwed up.
Google was also fined money (the linked article didn't specify if the money was paid to the plaintiffs or just to the French courts). I wonder if Google pointed out in their briefs that the French courts taking this action would more or less make it impractical, from a business point of view, for Google (or any other search provider, for that matter) to ever return unflattering results from any search. Why?
Are Europeans on the eve of a new, wonderfully utopian view of the net? One wonders what a search for "Greece debt" would look like. Probably the first entry would be about ponies.
Ok, so to legally murder someone I can create an algorithm, since gee golly, it was the algorithms fault. No wonder embedded medical device programming has correctness problems (i.e., lawsuits, invalid calibration that gives people cancer, etc.).
Google can return the results with the word "escroc" first.
Have gnu, will travel.
must be a diversion. Excuse me while I go prove myself....
Please don't propegate "blog speak".
Below the fold... after the break...
Yes, and the search ranking is supposed to rank by relevance. So if the 3rd result is the most relevant, then the search ranking is incorrect and should be fixed.
I see what you're saying. You're thinking of combating the SEO results. That is an ongoing battle that I don't think will ever truly be won. I've seen both sides of it. An ugly, escallating, no-valid-results land of despair and buzzwords...
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
They've been Google bombed by someone dissing the insurance company. Instead of simply fixing it, they tried to bluff it out, as if substantial numbers are searching for webpages on "Lyonnaise de Garantie crooks".
They didn't want to accept that they had any liability for that phrase, hence they couldn't simply fix a simple Google bomb. Childish.
No, because it's a different search. I'm sure there are plenty of people that search 'MS Antivirus' because they're looking for an AV program or because they're looking for the AV software that Microsoft makes, but they don't know its name.
'MS Antivirus Malware' might not be searched nearly as often, but it is a string that occurs more enough, so its added as a suggestion, the same is likely true for strings like 'MS Antivirus name' or 'MS Antivirus recommendations'
I would delist them entirely.
If you have a problem with how we rank our searches, we can remove you entirely.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
You do understand those were used before blogs nor are they exclusive to blogs? You may be shocked to discover things like pages, bookmarks, wallpaper held meaning before you discovered blogs as well. How is it working out telling people to do things on the internet?
Man blir trött av att gå och göra ingenting.
Apparently this is a recurring problem for Google. On Sept 27, 2010, a French court convicted Google and Eric Schmidt of criminal defamation (discussion of it and why it wouldn't happen in the U.S. here) for Google's suggest function. The fact that over a year later they're facing this again means (a) they were expecting this to happen and have apparently decided it's part of the cost of doing business in France, and (b) the company suing them has many lawyers who were surely aware of this and saw a neat way to make some money and censor negative opinions.
If you type the Japanese kanji for 'wife' (plus space) you get 'wife birthday present' on the first suggestion, while 'husband' gives 'husband die'.
And this quite accurately reflects marriage in modern Japan...
Google should just switch it all off and display a message, "Autocomplete is disabled in France because your judges are retards."
Table-ized A.I.
If I ran Google I'd blacklist said company. No results for them period, on any search. I'd say "To make sure we comply with the order that no offensive terms ever lead to you, we have removed you from our indexing entirely. This is the only way we can ensure that there is never an offensive term that might result in your company being linked."
They'd quickly find out it is not good for business when you can't be located by the most popular search engine. If they wanted back on I'd demand they sign an indemnity/permission document saying that they agree never to sue us no matter what search terms may end up linking to them.
As far as I can make out, this case is making at least some headlines in France too, and the general sentiment is outrage at the company and at the court system, very similar to here. See these:
link 1
link 2
link3
However, more interestingly, the last link points to some other case where the judgment went the other way, i.e. Google suggesting a derogatory term in their search suggestions, and the French court finding them innocent. The text in French is here (use google translate !) and shows much more common sense.
Interestingly, I do not recall seeing this well-reasoned judgment on the front page of Slashdot, much in the way of traditional news outlets not reporting good news as often as bad ones.
It's scary when a big company decides that because there was no human thought, any outcome is completely ok. Let's hope they aren't contracted for weapons systems...
... It's an insurance company, for Missael's sake. They're not just crooks, they're petty thieves, drug dealers, human traffickers, child molesters and they are mean to little ponies. I bet they also furiously masturbate to kiddie scat bestiality porn while yelling "je me rende! je me rende! vive la France! escargot tour eiffel café merde rien ne va plus!"
Geeks are so full of shit that "beating the crap out of them" takes a whole new meaning.
I'm French, and I've just searched for "Lyonnaise de garantie" on google.fr, from France.
Results are in French:
1st hit: official webpage
2nd hit: a post from a customer : "no answer from Lyonnaise de Garantie, no understanding of my problem..." - Not very positive.
3rd hit: another one : "They're thiefs. There are plenty of problems with this insurance." (many more of these when you click)
Next hits: articles on the trial, financial information about the company...
The best one, at the end: "Associated searches : lyonnaise de garantie escroc" - I don't think that they have gained much.
BTW: I had never heard from this company before. It's supposed to sell insurances for landlords against unpaid rents, but it does not seem to pay itself.
They so understand the internets.
Now, this is interesting: the number of searches for "Lyonnaise de Garantie escroc" has been increasing since December 27. I wonder what happened that day.
This is not about single court decisions.
This is a stupid court decisions because next in line are politicians who complain about being called liars by Google Suggest, scammers who complain about being called scammers, churches who refuse being called looney, etc.
You end up with a huge index of forbidden word combinations, which affect negatively the performance of Google Suggest and are a pain to maintain. Next thing, someone will probbaly claim that Google should have placed them proactively on that list, and ask for damages.
I would support the idea of delisting such companies completely, but crooks and escroc's like the Lyonnaise de Garantie would then sue to be listed again.
Hey don't blame me, IANAB
And what if Google added the phrase on purpose? Freedom of opinion is protected in most cultured countries. Does this mean French restaurants can now sue Michelin for a negative review?
Geeks worldwide seem to manage two steps forward for every step "forward" that governments make. Hopefully the trend will continue. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/mafiaafire-gee-no-evil/
This Firefox addon re-enables censored "suggestion" content from Google.
It's a great plugin, but I'm curious as to how it actually works.
We all don't know whether or not Lyonnaise de Garantie are crooks but we do know that they tried to censor the web to remove any connection between lyonnaise-de-garantie.com and crooks or escroc. We assume Lyonnaise de Garantie are not crooks, although we haven't yet seen proof that they aren't. Some people say that the cover-up effort was successful.
HTC EVO 4G LTE w/ CM 10.2 | NookColor w/ CM 10.2 | Samsung Epic 4G w/ CM 10.1
http://spreadingsantorum.com/
All better now? Happy to help!
So right, I tried searches for escroc and the crooks in question, despite being in Scotland, not France. Why are google applying French law to non French territory? It's either an act of war (if ordered by a French court - applying their own law over a foreign land) OR terrorism (if done by Google themselves)
Actually Google Inc. was fined 50.000 euros and had to put the decision on their webpage ! Oupps...
singapore has 1 party that has held more than 90% of parliament seats since the day the nation was founded and does development with 20 year plans(see the bio-and- fusionopolises). the economy is roughly divided between the civil service(and its spin-offs; step boards and quasi government 'corporations') , government-linked companies(telecoms, transport,super markets etc) and MNCs.
e.g. cabs
there's a Land Transport Authority that seems to be managing land transport, i.e. handing out cab licenses
there's some sort of advisory panel that reviews transport prices and 'advises'...
the biggest cab fleet is run by ComfortDelgro, a government linked company
there may even be difficulty in identifying the role of the subsidised public housing system...
the land is owned by the Singapore Land Authority , they set the minimum land price
private housing developers work on that
the Housing Development Board builds its own houses and then subsidises them based on the 'market price' for housing
qualifying for the subsidy involves being singaporean and getting married or being 35 years old, or something like that.
the housing units are distributed with respect to your race and how close are your parents' place.
the Housing Development Board got so good at housing development that it spun off something called Surbana
the price of a new HDB flat has increased maybe 30-fold in the last 30 years.
rising housing value has been touted by the government as a way of sharing the rewards of economic growth with its people.
singapore should really be celebrated as a successful mix of democracy and central economic planning. not sure where this lies in the capitalism/socialism debate.
Parent translated into French using "you know who's" translator:
...
Lyonnaise de Garantie est le problème ici, pas le gouvernement français. Bien sûr, cela est une décision mal, mais ça arrive tout le temps dans les systèmes judiciaires. Bref, ils tentent de plaider l'écart l'opinion de quelqu'un d'entre eux. Je trouve ce genre de comportement doit être la forme la plus base de l'intimidation, et je me sens obligée de contribuer à l'effet Streisand"
À mon avis, la Lyonnaise de Garantie entreprise française à un homme, sont pires que des escrocs. Ils sont le limon le plus épouvantable et dégénère avilir, de l'ordre le plus bas. Les baiser, elles sont la variole sur le monde et un gaspillage de l'air. Pour appeler un paquet de cons sans valeur apporterait la honte au packs itinérant des cons sans valeur. Jean-Luc Berho, le vice-président de l'entreprise ne peut se résoudre à l'orgasme, sans moins qu'il s'étouffe un chien à mort. Jean-Jacques Olivié, président de ce pack slithering des reptiliens, ne peut faire confiance pour ne pas s'étouffer s'est accidentellement à la mort s'il est laissé sans surveillance avec un fade croissants. Peut-il attraper la syphilis par une mule ivre arménien. Fraudes à l'assurance pourrait apprendre quelque chose de ces voleurs, comme on pouvait la lamproie et autres vermines tubulaires sucer le sang.
Mais, hé, je peux me tromper. Après tout, c'est juste une opinion.
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2603836&cid=38587006
Then the public outcry there would force the government to abandon its efforts at censorship, which are ultimately doomed to fail anyway.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2603836&cid=38589290
I would bother asking for cite, but some idiot moderated you informative so I won't bother : you poopoo the french and it apparentely please some people to no end so they mod you informative. The same crap said about the US system would draw the ire of poster requiring info. Ho hell. Most french are not anti american (we most dislike american foreign politic), but most american on the net seems profundely anti french. Probably out of cheer jealousy somewhere.
They haven't got a "no human interaction" protection. So they lose nothing.
And it won't be human interaction: it'll just be blocked like Kiddie Porn sites are blocked. Automatically.
Let's go santorum on their ass.