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French Court Frowns On Autocomplete, Tells Google To Remove Searches

Posted by timothy on from the la-coste-has-an-esalligator dept.

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.'"

6 of 343 comments (clear)

  1. Simple Solution by Nova+Express · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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!

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    Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)

    http://www.lawrenceperson.com/

  2. "Lyonnaise de Garantie crooks" by blind+biker · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
  3. Re:Remove them from google indexes entirely. by Mashiki · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Didn't they do that a few years ago with some papers and such from Belgium, and then they came screaming back about it when their sites dropped around 80% of their traffic? I'm sure I read that here on /. a few days ago, well considering my memory it could have been a few years ago too.

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    Om, nomnomnom...
  4. Re:Censorship. by penix1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Then the solution is to remove "Lyonnaise de Garantie" from the search engine all together. Wipe them off any search result what-so-ever. Nothing in French law requires Google to index any site...

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    This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
  5. Slashdot, Google, monopoly, and moderation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Also, google does not have a monopoly on search engines, as that is not a service it sells. Google's business is in online advertisement, which it is not a monopoly (although it does have a massive chunk of the industry).

    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.

  6. Re:Wrong conclusion. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It was called communism, and it failed miserably. That expectation of receiving money for your work was changed for, go work or else.

    "There is talk about the failure of socialism, yet where is the success of capitalism in Africa, Asia, and Latin America? Where is the success of capitalism in places where thousands of millions of people live? I believe that the failure of capitalism should be discussed as much as the failure of socialism in a small number of countries. Capitalism failed in more than 100 countries, which now face a truly desperate situation." - Fidel Castro, 1991.

    And communism was never tried, not in a large scale. Try to read about its ideas before you make a fool of yourself again, or at least refrain from talking about what you don't understand. And that goes for other topics too, if you have no idea what it is about your uneducated opinion is irrelevant.