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Searches in both English and Chinese for Albert
Yeung Sau-shing, the founder and chairman of Hong Kong-based
conglomerate Emperor Group, will automatically suggest phrases
related to organized crime using Google's 'autocomplete'
function.
On Tuesday, the High Court of Hong Kong dismissed Google's
argument that it was not responsible for the autocomplete
suggestions related to Yeung and that the court did not have
personal jurisdiction over the U.S. search giant.
Google frequently finds itself embroiled in legal issues over
what results are shown by its search engine. The European
Union's top court in May ruled that people have a right to
request that years-old personal information that is no longer
relevant be removed from Internet search results.
"There is a good arguable case that Google Inc is the publisher
of the Words and liable for their publication," said Marlene Ng,
the deputy high court judge, in her ruling.
Google declined to comment on the verdict.
Yeung is seeking damages from Google for libel and wants the
company to remove the defamatory search suggestions, court
documents said.
Google argued that autocomplete works according to an automated
algorithm and the company is not responsible for the resulting
suggestions, which change depending on what a critical mass of
users search for.
"The entire basis of the internet will be compromised if search
engines are required to audit what can be assessed by users
using their search tools," court documents attributed Gerard
McCoy, Google's lawyer, as saying.
"It would be impossible for Google Inc to manually interfere
with or monitor the search processes given the billions of
searches conducted by Google Search," McCoy said according to
the documents.
Because Google did not protest that the autocomplete suggestions
were defamatory and they have criminal associations, Google may
end up paying a large amount of money if Yeung sues
successfully.
"In my view, it cannot be said at this stage that damages for
reputational damage in Hong Kong are likely to be minimal if
Yeung wins at trial," Ng said.
(Reporting by Paul Carsten; Additional reporting by Venus Wu in
HONG KONG; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)
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