This article is also available in:
Deutsch: Italienisches Gericht macht Google für Suchvorschläge haftbar

On 31 March 2011, an Italian court of Milan ruled that Google was responsible for its Google Suggest, the "autocomplete" function that suggests words and characters to complete a partial search for its users.

The case was brought to court by a person whose name, when typed in the Google search field, was associated, through the "suggested searches" (now "related searches"), to the words "truffatore" (con man, swindler) and "truffa" (scam, fraud). The person's public image as an entrepreneur and provider of educational services in the field of personal finance suffered and the man's lawyer, Carlo Piana, argued that Google could control the content produced by its autocomplete function.

Google defended itself by claiming that it was protected by the E-Commerce Directive exempting online service providers from liability for content they give access to but not created by them.

"Google argued that it could not be held liable because it is a hosting provider, but we showed that this is content produced by them (and by the way, they do filter out certain content, including terms that are known to be used to distribute copyright infringing material), although through automated means," wrote Carlo Piana in a blog post.

The court agreed, emphasizing that Google's autocomplete search was not entirely automatic and Google did have control over the defamatory suggestions its algorithms came up with.

Moreover, Google had failed to intervene to correct the specific combination of words despite the warning sent by the office of the applicant. An ordinance last January had already called to intervene but Google did not take action, arguing that the system was based on statistical evaluations arising from users' searches and therefore the engine is not responsible for the content generated..

Google was ordered to filter out libellous "search suggestions" and to pay the man 1500 Euro for the rights affected, and 2300 Euro for various legal fees.

According to a report by All Technology News, Google has already censored in 2011, in its auto-complete keyword search, some words related to alleged illegal piracy. Users no longer receive suggested entries for partially entered characters for some p2p platforms.

Guido Scorza, a lawyer specializing in new media and technology law and founder of the Institute for Innovation policies believes the court's decision is "an erroneous interpretation that does not take into account the technological context and media provided for reference or the scope of certain types of behaviour in a typical environment". In his opinion, "a sequence of three words, with no punctuation or logical connection, on a blank page and just below a field of search, in 2011, is not a meaningful sentence, let alone a sentence of offensive content."

"We believe that Google should not be held liable for terms that appear in autocomplete as these are predicted by computer algorithms based on searches from previous users, not by Google itself. We are currently reviewing our options," was Google's statement.

Google has lost similar cases last year in France, Sweden and Brazil.

Google is responsible for 'autofill' search terms, says Italian court (11.04.2011)
http://www.out-law.com/default.aspx?page=11860

The Italian Court Decision (only in Italian, 31.03.2011)
http://piana.eu/files/Ordinanza.pdf

Autocompletion brings liability (5.04.2011)
http://piana.eu/suggestions

Google Suggest, convicted in Italy (only in Italian, 6.04.2011)
http://punto-informatico.it/3125765/PI/News/google-suggest-colpevole-i...

Words, just words (only in Italian, 6.04.2011)
http://punto-informatico.it/3126383/PI/Commenti/parole-soltanto-parole...

EDRi-gram: First decision in the Italian criminal case against Google executives (24.02.2011)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number8.4/decision-italy-vs-google-execut...