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This article covers the various criticisms and controversies that internet search company Google has been involved in.

Contents 1 Copyright issues 2 Privacy 2.1 European Union 2.2 Norway 3 PageRank system 4 Digital rights management 5 Copyright 5.1 Agence France Presse dispute 5.2 Belgium Copiepress dispute 5.3 Perfect 10 lawsuit 5.4 Authors Guild lawsuit 5.5 Viacom copyright lawsuit 6 Censorship 7 Past legal issues 8 Personnel issues 9 See also 10 External links 11 References

A number of organizations have used the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to demand that Google remove references to allegedly copyrighted material on other sites. Google typically handles this by removing the link as requested and including a link to the complaint in the search results.

There have also been complaints that Google's Web cache feature violates copyright. However, Google provides mechanisms for requesting that caching be disabled. Google also honors the robots.txt file, which is another mechanism that allows operators of a website to request that part or all of their site not be included in search engine results. The U.S. District Court of Nevada ruled that Google's caches do not constitute copyright infringement under American law in Field v. Google and Parker v. Google.^[1][2]

In June 2004, Google Watch revealed the details of a contract between the University of Michigan and Google to create digitized copies of the copyrighted materials stored at the University's library. This contract is part of Google Book Search's effort to digitize millions of books and make the full text searchable. There are claims that it is a violation of copyright laws to use copyrighted material for profit by placing search ads beside the search results of these digitized books. Also, Google is setting a new precedent by making digital copies of copyrighted material on a wide scale without explicit permission from copyright holders. Meanwhile, Google claims that it is in compliance with all existing and historical applications of copyright laws regarding books. The contract between Google and the University of Michigan does make it clear that Google will provide only excerpts of copyright text in a search. The contract says that it will comply with "fair use", an exemption in copyright law that allows people to reproduce portions of text of copyrighted material for research purposes.

Daniel Brandt, Google's most persistent and dedicated critic, discovered in 2002 that Google placed a cookie on each user's computer, which can be used to track that person's search history, and that the cookie was not set to expire until 2038.^[3] As of 2007, Google's cookie now expires in two years but renews itself whenever you use a Google site.^[3] While there is no evidence that Google turns over information to the FBI or the NSA, the value of what Google gathers about users every time they perform a search, Brandt holds, is simply too alluring to keep away from the government's eyes.^[3] In response, Google claims cookies are necessary to maintain user preferences between sessions and offer other search features. The use of cookies with such distant expiration dates is common.^{[citation needed]}

Critics have pointed out the dangers and privacy implications of having a centrally-located, widely popular data warehouse of millions of Internet users' searches, and how under controversial existing U.S. law, Google can be forced to hand over all such information to the U.S. government, or any other government of a country which Google serves.^[4]

Some users^[Who?] believe the processing of email message content by Google's Gmail service goes beyond proper use. The point is often made that people without Gmail accounts, who have not agreed to the Gmail terms of service, but send email to Gmail users have their correspondence analyzed without permission. Google claims that mail sent to or from Gmail is never read by a human being beyond the account holder, and is only used to improve relevance of advertisements. Other popular email services such as Hotmail also scan incoming email to try to determine whether it is unsolicited spam email (which Gmail also does), but do not scan emails to improve relevancy of advertisements.^{[citation needed]} Chris Hoofnagle, then associate director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, DC warned that, "As courts become more frequent integrators of electronic records, there is a greater risk of Google ... becoming a serious privacy threat."^{[citation needed]}

In early 2005, the United States Department of Justice filed a motion in federal court to force Google to comply with a subpoena for, "the text of each search string entered onto Google's search engine over a one-week period (absent any information identifying the person who entered such query)."^[5] Google fought the subpoena, due to concerns about users' privacy.^[6] In March 2006, the court ruled partially in Google's favor, recognizing the privacy implications of turning over search terms.^[7]

Google's online map service, "Street View" has been accused of taking pictures and coming too close inside people's private homes and/or people who walk down the street not knowing they are being watched on Google's service.^{[attribution needed]}

In its 2007 Consulation Report, Privacy International ranked Google as "Hostile to Privacy", its lowest rating on their report, making Google the only company in the list to achieve that ranking. ^[8]

European Union (EU) data protection officials (The Article 29 working party who advise the EU on privacy policy) have written to Google asking the company to justify its policy of keeping information on individuals’ internet searches for up to two years. The letter questioned whether Google has “fulfilled all the necessary requirements” on the EU laws concerning data protection ^[9]. The probe by the EU into the data protection issue, as of 24 May, 2007 is continuing. On 1 June Google admitted its privacy policy is vague ^[10].

The Data Inspectorate of Norway (Norway is not a member of the EU) has investigated Google (and others) and has stated that the 18- to 24-month period for retaining data proposed by Google was too long.^[11]

Google's central PageRank system has been criticized. Some, such as Daniel Brandt, call it, "undemocratic". Common arguments are that the system is unfairly biased towards large web sites, and that the criteria for a page's importance are not subject to peer review. PageRank is a largely automated system which is impartial insofar as it knows no personal bias. However, Google's system also relies on a certain degree of human oversight (for example, human evaluation of PageRank known as Rater Hub Google), and use of company names on Adwords^{[citation needed]}. Furthermore, the deletion of critical sites from Google results (for example, sites critical of Scientology^[12]) is decided by individual human beings according to company policy. It remains unclear whether any process could assert the importance of a page in a way that would draw less criticism than the current PageRank system.

The system is also susceptible to manipulation and fraud through the use of dummy sites, such as the use of Google bombs or spamdexing.

In September 2007, the Australian Consumer and Competition Commission (ACCC) has brought a two-pronged case against Trading Post and Google - including subsidiaries Google Australia and Google Ireland - for potentially misleading consumers by selling its rankings to commercial companies rather than sorting them by relevance.

Announced on January 6, 2006 at the CES in Las Vegas, Nevada, the Google Video store sells copyrighted content at the Google Video website. Initially, this service is restricted to the United States and certain other countries. To protect copyright of some video programming, Google created a Google DRM (Digital Rights Management) lock for certain paid content, which caused concern regarding user privacy.^[13]

On 2007-08-15 Google discontinued it's DTO/DTR (download-to-own/rent) program. Videos which had been previously purchased under that program, as a result of the embedded DRM licenses being revoked, are no longer viewable despite being purchased for ownership. ^{[14] [15]}

In March 2005, Agence France-Presse (AFP) sued Google for $17.5 Million, alleging that Google News infringed on its copyright because, "Google includes AFP's photos, stories and news headlines on Google News without permission from Agence France-Presse."^[16] It was also alleged that Google ignored a cease and desist order, though Google counters that it has opt-out procedures which AFP could have followed but did not.

It is possible that AFP will make additional arguments in court that it has not yet made in public, but currently, many pundits are confused by the decision to sue because Google does not display the full article on its site, provides a link to one of AFP's 600 online clients such as Singapore's Channel NewsAsia (which presumably benefits AFP because more people view the article and advertising), and because the articles are available via the providers' websites regardless of Google's actions.^[17][18] It was also argued that had AFP wanted to prevent free use of its articles, it should have asked its providers to require subscriptions rather than suing Google. Additionally, "in 2002, a federal appeals court ruled that websites may reproduce and post 'thumbnail' or downsized versions of copyrighted photographs", so Google News' thumbnails are likely legal. Still, AFP argues that the headline and first sentence of an article constitutes the "heart" of the work, and therefore their reproduction constitutes copyright infringement.

According to the Canada Free Press, "Google Inc. is now attempting to remove all postings of Agence France-Presse material from its site, although AFP spokesmen say that even if this is done, the lawsuit will continue. It seems that the basis of the lawsuit is just the abstract notion of copyright without any real damages to justify the action." The article concluded, "It would be a sad day for those who look to the Internet for news if AFP is successful in limiting what Google can display. AFP's lawsuit, if successful, is bound to have a major impact on how news is delivered on the Internet."

On April 6, 2007, AFP and Google have reached an agreement [4]. This agreement ends all lawsuits still pending. It also allows Google to integrate full articles from the AFP. This is a major difference compared to the usual use of snippets of the referenced articles.

In September 2006, Belgian newspapers Le Soir, La Libre Belgique and La Derniere Heure, represented by Belgian newspaper group Copiepresse won a court case against Google for copyright infringement, for republishing snippets of their newspapers' content on Google news without permission.^{[19] [20]} To comply with the judgment, Google was ordered to remove all news stories of these sites from their news search results, as well as to publish the judgment on the news.google.be site.^[20] In November 2006, Google defended the case again as an interpretation of the court order.^[20]

Main article: Perfect 10 v. Google, Inc.

On February 21, 2006, in a lawsuit involving adult online site Perfect 10, a U.S. District Court Judge ruled that Google's image search function had violated the law by copying, without permission, photographs of naked women created by Perfect 10.^[21]

On September 20, 2005, the Authors Guild, a group that represents 8,000 U.S. authors, filed a class action suit in federal court in Manhattan against Google over its unauthorized scanning and copying of books through its Google Library program. The lawsuit seeks damages and an injunction that will prevent the company from continuing their very ambitious digitization project. Arguments in the case will hinge around the interpretation of the four factors of Fair Use.^[22]

Many commentators in the world of copyright law and technology were not surprised by this development as the Authors Guild has also been involved in attempting to make online publishers pay royalties to writers whose stories appear in any number of online databases without their expressed consent. In a concession to general concerns about the nature of their project, Google had announced plans in August 2005 that they would respect the wishes of copyright holders who contacted the company to inform them that they did not want their works included in this digitization project.^[23]

On March 13, 2007, Viacom filed a $1 billion lawsuit against Google and its subsidiary, YouTube, alleging massive copyright infringement.^[24] Viacom claims that approximately 160,000 unauthorized video clips of its television shows have been loaded onto YouTube's site and viewed more than 1.5 billion times.^[25]

See also: Viacom#Copyright complaints against YouTube

Main article: Censorship by Google

Google has been criticized for willfully censoring some of the content in its services, especially in China.

In Search King, Inc. v. Google Technology, Inc., 2003 WL 21464568 (W.D. Ok. 2003), Search King sued Google for intentional interference with business relationships. The controversy arose because Google manually overrode its own ranking system. In order to reduce a competitor's power, Google decreased that competitor's website's PageRank artificially, finally eliminating it from the rankings altogether. In its defense, Google contended that it could not be sued because its PageRanks were constitutionally protected speech. The court accepted this argument in the face of the fact that the PageRanks are purported to be based on neutral algorithms, not personal opinion.

In May 2004, the Baltimore Sun interviewed Peri Fleisher, a great-niece of Edward Kasner, the mathematician whose nephew coined the word, "googol", who said Kasner's descendants were, "exploring" legal action against Google due to its name.

The same year, Google settled a patent infringement lawsuit with Yahoo! by issuing 2.7 million shares of Google stock to them. Yahoo! had earlier alleged that Google's AdSense program violated a patent held by Yahoo!'s Overture unit. The settlement cost Google around $275 Million which resulted in the company posting a net loss in the third quarter of 2004.

On August 18, 2005, former Google sales executive Christina Elwell, promoted to national sales director at Google in late 2003, accused her supervisor of discrimination against her when he terminated her employment after she informed him of her pregnancy.^[26] After the loss of three of her quadruplets, which she claimed was due to the stressful circumstances created by Google, Elwell sued the company. She also refused an offer from Shona Brown, Google Vice President of Business Operations, to reinstate her to a "low-level operations position".

• Googlezon
• History of Google
• Google Watch
• Don't be evil

• Privacy Group Flunks Google, eWeek.com
• The Economist, "Who's afraid of Google?" from Aug 30th 2007

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