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Google’s search for justice results in High Court ruling it is not a publisher

Google’s six-year battle with Melbourne lawyer George Defteros has finally culminated in a win for the search engine, with the High Court ruling today that it is not a publisher.

In 2020, Defteros successfully sued Google for $40,000, purporting that Google’s refusal to take down a hyperlink to an article about him in The Age was an act of defamation.

The article covered his 2004 charge of conspiracy and incitement to murder underworld criminals and gangsters including Carl Williams. Those same charges were dropped in 2005, leading Supreme Court Justice Melinda Richards to deem the tech giant a publisher and grant Defteros $40,000 in damages.

Google subsequently took the case to the High Court, arguing that it was not a publisher of the content and rather an engine that allowed existing searchers to access the content.

Submissions from Defteros argued “the Google search engine is not a passive tool, such as the facility provided by a telephone company”.

The High Court ultimately ruled in Google’s favour and rejected Defteros’ claims, asserting that since the engine did not produce, write or disseminate the content in the article, it couldn’t be held accountable for publishing the material in question.

“The provision of a hyperlink in the Search Result merely facilitated access to the … article and was not an act of participation in the bilateral process of communicating the contents of that article to a third party,” the judgment said.

“In reality, a hyperlink is merely a tool which enables a person to navigate to another webpage.”

Google was notified of the defamatory article in February 2016, but did not remove it until December that year. It was accessed 150 times between those months.

Mumbrella has reached out to Google Australia for comment.

Back in June, John Barilaro, former deputy premier of New South Wales won a battle with the search engine giant and was awarded $715,000 in defamation damages, as a result of videos posted by comedian Jordan Shanks, aka Friendlyjordies.

Episode breakdown

  • What will Google’s defamation ruling spell for platforms? (01:45)
  • What do two sets of media agency rankings tell us about the industry (11:22)
  • Interview with Mat Baxter (15:03)
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