Infotech Lead India: Failure to offer accurate result when one online user in Coimbatore searched for “Hotmail” on Google has landed the search engine giant in an Indian court.
In a complaint, Coimbatore -based software engineer C Ashok Kumar says Google’s search engine provides links to pornographic and sexually explicit websites even while searching for neutral details.
For instance, he searched for keyword – Hotmail — using the Google search engine.
“As soon as I typed Hot, the search engine started showing links to abusive contents and pornographic videos. Even at my home, several children are using the internet for completing home work and online-competitive tests. They will be misguided by the search suggestions leading to abusive contents,” he says.
Times of India reported that the first additional district munsif court of Coimbatore has issued notices to Google, its local subsidiary Google India, its video division YouTube and the central government’s Indian Computer Emergency Response Team after the complaint.
Notices will be served to the internet giant soon and the case will be considered by the court again on June 7.
China had already removed obscene contents from Google search engines.
In a related development, Google last week agreed to change how it displays search results in Europe — including a better labeling of its promoted content and displaying links to competitors — to appease concerns it might be abusing its dominant market position.
Google’s search engine, which is the world’s most influential gateway to online information and commerce, enjoys a near-monopoly in Europe.
The European Union’s antitrust body, which acts as the 27-nation bloc’s antitrust authority, has since 2010 been investigating whether the company is unfairly stifling competition. It pointed out several areas of concern that Google is now trying to address through the proposed concessions.
Google has offered to more clearly label search results stemming from its own services such as Google News, Google Maps or its shopping and flight search functions. That would allow users to distinguish between natural search results and others promoted by Google. It also agreed to display some search results from its competitors and links to their services, the EU Commission said.
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