Google ordered to censor search terms in France

Despite removing certain terms from its Autocomplete and Instant search features, it looks like Google still isn’t doing enough to please the authorities. According to reports online, the French Supreme Court has ruled that Google should censor the words “torrent”, “rapidshare” and “megaupload” from its AutoComplete and Instant features. I’m not sure why because Google has already been doing this for some time now – last year, in fact. Maybe it wasn’t on the French version of Google. But whatever the case is, it looks like those of you who use Google France will have to type a few more letters instead of having AutoComplete finish your search query for you. Yeah, that’s going to stop piracy!

On the other hand, if Google was forced to censor its search results, I guess that would be more effective. Then again, people will just turn to the countless other search engines that aren’t so popular or policed by the authorities to bypass this issue. What do you think of the censorship of AutoComplete and Instant search?

George Wong
Categories: Web
Tags: censorship, france, Google