Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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.