Tech giant Google today filed a petition in the Delhi High Court seeking an interim order to protect it from being termed as a ‘social media intermediary’. Google has filed a petition to remove part of a court’s April order that “wrongly” classified Google’s search engine as social media. Social media platforms will have to comply with the new Information Technology Rules, 2021. Experts also agree that the Google search engine’s argument for not calling itself a social media intermediary may have merit.
A Google spokesperson said, “The search engine displays content and information available on the Internet. However, we follow a policy of consistently removing offensive content from search results. But the Delhi High Court order imposes certain responsibilities, which will make Google Search wrongly classified as social media intermediary.
In a case in April, the Delhi High Court had termed Google search as “intermediary”. In this case pictures of a woman were uploaded on a pornographic website without her consent and the content could not be completely removed from the internet despite court orders. In the order dated April 20, search engines such as Google Search, Yahoo Search, Microsoft Bing, DuckDuckGo were directed to try to use automated tools to identify any material considered objectionable and its use to the world. content that may appear on any other website or online platform.
A Google spokesperson said, “We have filed a petition against this part of the order and we hope to be given an opportunity to explain the steps we have taken to remove objectionable content from Google search results.” ‘ Google says that the search engine has a completely different role than social media intermediaries like Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.
