An entirely separate site, Google, has managed to get a Dutch community news site successfully sued.
Klup.nl, a network of user-edited news portals, has been sued by a local BMW dealer, Zwartepoorte, because a Google search for “Zwartepoorte + bankrupt” returned a page description, or “snippet”, that supposedly gave the impression that the local BMW dealer has gone bankrupt.
What’s most surprising is that no-one at Klup.nl had ever even written a story about Zwartepoorte and bankruptcy, Google’s algorithm had joined together two unrelated sentences from the site for its index abstract.
Google had summarized it with the following snippet (translated into English):
“Complete name: Zwartepoorte Specialiteit: BMW…This company has been declared bankrupt, it has been acquired by the motordealer I have worked for Boat Rialto…”
Klup.nl owner Miljoenhuizen.nl told De Telegraaf :
“If the search result were to imply or insinuate that Zwartepoorte has gone bust, it would be Google’s responsibility, not ours.”
Nevertheless, a judge has ruled that the website Miljoenhuizen.nl is liable and the site was ordered to fix its own site in such a way that Google couldn’t make the same mistake again – failure to comply would mean a €500-a-day fine.
**UPDATE**
Klup.nl founder Nico Schoonderwoerd has been in touch with us and shared his letter to Google requesting assistance (pasted below). If you’re reading this and you are able to give any assistance or provide evidence of a comparable case internationally – please leave your contact details in comments or be in touch with me via email at zee@thenextweb.com.
Dear Sir/Madam,
Last Wednesday the Dutch court for urgent affairs (voorzieningenrechter) ordered me to do the following:
veroordeelt Schoonderwoerd om binnen twee dagen na betekening van dit vonnis de inrichting van de website www.klup.nl zodanig aan te passen en aangepast te houden, dat niet langer via deze website, door middel van de zoekmachine van Google, een zoekresultaat wordt weergegeven waarin de onjuist indruk wordt gewekt dat Zwartep00rte fai11iet is
which says that I have to change klup.nl such that no longer a search result is displayed which gives the wrong impression that Zwartep00rte is bankrupt.
Directly after this verdict I have updated the page zwartep00rte.bedrijven.klup.nl such that the word “fai11iet” is no longer mentioned, therefore excluding the possibility for the Google system to combine the words “fai11iet” and “Zwartep00rte”.
This combination of these search terms leads in Google to the following page:
http://www.google.nl/search?q=zwartep00rte+fai11iet
and shows as a second search result
zwartep00rte bedrijven.klup.nl – Informatie en meningen over …
Volledige naam: Zwartep00rte Specialiteit: BMW … Dit bedrijf is fai11iet verklaard, het is overgenomen door het motorhuis Ik heb bij Boot Rialto gewerkt …
zwartep00rte.bedrijven.klup.nl/ – 12k – In cache - Gelijkwaardige pagina’s -
As you may know, the search result will only be updated once the Google crawler passes by the website. As the verdict of the judge leaves room for interpretation, this may mean that the verdict is not correctly executed, and I will be held responsible for this. I am to pay 500 euros for every day that I do not comply with this verdict (which is attached).
My urgent request
Please let your crawler visit http://zwartep00rte.bedrijven.klup.nland have the corresponding search results be updated within 2 days, or give me instructions how I can achieve this.
Best regards,
Nico Schoonderwoerd
director
via Register via 24 Oranges
Er… don’t believe everything you read (without checking it first)? Hehe.
Judge is a fool. It’s Google that has to fix this.
Surely they could appeal this? I mean theoretically Google could now snippet this site to the same result – would thenextweb then be liable?
Is there any way to stop Google taking snippets of the site short of putting all text into images?
Absolutely ludicrous.
lol and now if you type in the company name it gets 50 hits with bankruptcy with this news story in it, nothing new here. This is FAIL! What he was trying to accomplish is made even worst by this.
Hard to believe that the judge finds the site owner guilty for this. I did read that they’re going to appeal, so I wonder how that turns out: http://www.nieuwslijst.nl/nieuws/kranten/NU.nl/Internet/artikelen/Hoger_beroep_in_zaak_om_Google-resultaten/333341/search292830/0
Insane!!!
This is to crazy for words …
The judges should really have a better vision off the WWW before they make these absurd conclussions!
That’s unbelievable – how can the newspaper be responsible for the way Google renders two (arguably) arbitrary bits of information, especially when Google’s search criteria are so secretive anyway?
Either the judge must be stupid, or too scared to point the finger at Google?
This is utterly unbelievable. That they were asked to modify the site so that the company name and word “bankruptcy” don’t appear on the same page is fair enough, but to be charged €500 every day for not complying when it’s completely out of the control of the site owner is ridiculous (although you can request google to remove pages/cached pages via webmaster tools).
This can’t possibly stand up to appeal, the site owner needs to get a good web-savvy lawyer to lay it on the line for the idiotic judge.
The website was held responsible for refusing to make a simple change that would minimize further damage, even though the website acknowledged it could easily make that change.
The circumstances of this case are quite exceptional in that there were real rumours going around of the company being bankrupt, that can be shown to have been fuelled by the unfortunate Google snippet.
The judge very well understood the technical aspects of the case. He expressly stated that the verdict does not mean that any website is now liable for Google snippets. Only in the exceptional situation that someone suffers real damage and a website can do something very simple to minimize that damage would the website be liable for refusing to help.
Wow, scary!
It makes a little more sense reading Piet’s comment above. But couldn’t Google also have prevented the problem by making a simple change? For example, not truncating and combining different sections of te webpage.
Just because it’s a “simple” change, doesn’t mean it won’t undermine the value you provide to visitors or other competitive advantages. I’m sure the site had legitimate reasons not to make the change. Just as Google *always* has legitimate reasons not to change their algorithm.
To be fair, I think Google should also have been in court to answer for their part in the matter. Though I’m sure Zwartepoorte didn’t want to sue them in fear of making the bankruptcy rumours a reality!