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Japanese Court Orders Google To Turn Off Auto-Complete Function
An anonymous reader writes with news that a Tokyo District Court has granted its approval to a petition seeking to force Google to turn off the auto-complete feature for its search engine. "The petition against Google was filed by a Japanese man who claims the feature breached his privacy and eventually led to the loss of his job. According to the man, whose name has been withheld, when his name is typed into the Google search engine auto-complete suggests words associated with criminal behavior. And when those suggested searches are clicked, over 10,000 results are shown that disparage or defame him. According to the plaintiff, this negative Google footprint has prevented him from finding employment since his initial firing several years ago." Unfortunately for him, "Google has rejected the order, saying that its U.S. headquarters will not be regulated by Japanese law, and that the case, according to its in-house privacy policy, does not warrant deleting autocomplete-suggested terms related to the petition, lawyer Hiroyuki Tomita said Sunday."
Because the servers that were seized were in Virginia?
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
What? Did you even read the same summary as I did? Wait - don't answer that.
He's complaining because when you type his name into google, the auto-completion suggests adding words to the end of your search, which leads you to ten thousand or so pages that indicate he's a criminal.
The only remaining question is, what's his name?
I'm the real Vorokrytin P. Winterbuttocks.
Not according to Google
http://www.google.com/about/datacenters/locations/index.html
Not datacenter, but they have local offices, which is even more substantial. They have corporate presence in the country.
Search Settings->Never show instant results, not so difficult.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
I didn't RTFA, but who cares as long as it gets turned off.
If you hate it as much as I do (android), you can use http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=0&hl=en as your homepage.
No. PC World has a better article with a bit more detail.
"The auto-complete function in Google's search bar fills in crimes when my client's name is entered," ... a false story about him containing allegations apparently spread across various sites, which were then indexed by the search giant
So basically you type "Glenn Beck" and it suggests that you add "murdered girl in 1990" to the search. Except that the guy's actual name and the crimes were, of course, withheld.
I'm the real Vorokrytin P. Winterbuttocks.
You are confusing 'auto-complete' with 'instant search results'.
'Auto-complete' provides relevant suggestions in the search text box based on what you have typed so far.
'Instant results' shows the output of the search without you having to press enter after you have finished typing in the search text box.
--
uh, what do I know !?!?
Don't be absurd. ... that's a boy's name.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
"According to the man, whose name has been withheld, when his name is typed into the Google search engine auto-complete suggests words associated with criminal behavior"
This doesn't sound like a partial search to me as you're saying.
Also from TFA:
"Another online reputation dustup occurred just last year when a British business owner was falsely accused of being a pedophile in a Google Places review. Google eventually removed the review, but not before the business owner lost, according to his own estimates, roughly 80 percent of his business."
Google makes money on searches. Google needs to pony up when they fuck up someone's life.
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
Duck Duck Go
you're welcome.
We don't have "Social Security" numbers, or any such tracking numbers in Japan. That makes it more difficult to cross-check people with the same name.
Japanese companies are risk averse to the extreme and even if the chance that the man is the criminal referenced by Google is 0.000000001%, that may be enough to disqualify him for a job. Companies will not want the press, the tabloids or police anywhere near company property, even if it is a case of mistaken identity.
Yahoo is the search engine king in Japan. The man would not have had this problem years ago or before Google's entry into the Japanese market. He is not suing Yahoo, only Google.
Google has a registered company, an office, bank accounts, employees and a co.jp domain name, which can only be purchased with a physical address in Japan.
He was not asking for a monetary reward. He will have to now in order to get Google's attention.
I think the people taking Google's side in this would change their tunes if it was them and they were in Japan.
One annoyance is that your instant settings are stored in the site cookies, not your Google account, so even if you are logged into GMail it will not remember that you turned instant off if you clear your cookies.
To get around this I use this URL as my homepage instead; http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=0