First Amendment Protection For Search Results?

An anonymous reader writes "A legal paper (PDF), commissioned by Google and written by Eugene Volokh and Donald Falk, makes the case that search results should be protected under the First Amendment, thereby making regulation of search results illegal. The authors say a search engine 'uses sophisticated computerized algorithms, but those algorithms themselves inherently incorporate the search engine company engineers' judgments about what material users are likely to find responsive to these queries.' Cory Doctorow's reaction: 'I think that the editorial right to exercise judgment is much more widely understood than the sacred infallibility of robotic sorting. I certainly support it more. But I wonder if Google appreciates that it will now have to confront people who are angry about their search rankings by saying, "I'm sorry, we just don't like you very much" instead of "I'm sorry, our equations put you where you belong." And oy, the libel headaches they're going to face.'"

Comments

Where are they going with this?

[bonch]

This seems to weaken their "algorithmically neutral" defense against antitrust scrutiny regarding the placement of Google services on the search results page. Perhaps they're testing the waters for abandoning that position in favor of this one, sidestepping antitrust charges entirely by citing free speech protection. I'm not sure governments would find that convincing, especially the EU. Honestly, if Google toned down the pushing of Google+ and other services in search results (or included clearly relevant results like Twitter and Facebook), they'd probably be in less hot water, but they seem to feel they have no other way to compete with social networking.