Google Suggest condemned by the Court of Milan

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Google Suggest was convicted by an Italian court, specifically by the Court of Milan. A Lombard entrepreneur, whose identity has not been disclosed, some time ago filed a complaint against Google because – by entering his name in the search bar – Google Suggest returned suggestions that were not positive at all and were deemed defamatory.
In particular, by typing the man’s name, Google suggested and associated with it terms such as “scam” and “fraudster.”
Since these words damaged the man’s reputation and professionalism – he was indeed present online with pages related to his professional activity in the financial sector – the entrepreneur therefore decided to take legal action so that Google Suggest would remove the defamatory terms, especially since these words were not present in the SERP results but only in the system on which Suggest.
Google Suggest is based, which is not based on the content of Google-indexed pages but “feeds” on the most recurring words used by those searching for something and which, therefore, do not necessarily have matches on the web and/or in reality.
The entrepreneur therefore asked Google both to remedy this (by removing the negative terms from Google Suggest) and to apply technical measures to the system to be able to proactively filter any associations of words that could lead to a poor online reputation.
The Court of Milan has today established that, although these mechanisms are triggered by users and not directly by Google it is still true that the operation of Suggest was designed by Google itself, therefore what governs the return of suggestions upstream is still the result of an action by Google.
And while Mountain View pointed out that “Internet users are able to understand the content offered by the Web,” the Court of Milan instead stated that this cannot actually be verified and that it is undeniable that the online population is not homogeneous either from a technical knowledge perspective or from a cultural point of view. Therefore, it is plausible that not everyone knows what Google Suggest is and that they take what appears among the search suggestions as true.
In conclusion, Google has received a second negative verdict (this is in fact a second ruling, following a previous appeal filed by Google), with an injunction to pay legal expenses and compensation to the complainant.
Google commented on this verdict in a laconic but very diplomatic manner, expressing disappointment over the decision made by the Court of Milan and reiterating that the terms suggested during the search cannot be “attributed” to Google, as they are the result of statistics based on searches already performed by all users.