Google: Search engine not social media intermediary

Claims protection against new IT rules before Delhi HC

Global technology giant Google on Wednesday moved Delhi High Court (HC), asking for interim protection against its declaration as a ‘social media intermidiary’.

Google petitioned to set aside a part of an April order that "mischaracterises" its search engine as a social media intermediary that has to comply with the new Information Technology (IT) Rules, 2021.

Experts agreed there may be merit in Google asking not to be identified as a social media intermediary.

“Search engines are a reflection of the content and information available on the internet. While we maintain a consistent policy over removal of objectionable content from the search results, the Delhi HC order has cast certain obligations that would wrongly classify Google Search as a social media intermediary,” said a spokesperson for Google.

The Delhi HC had identified Google Search as an 'intermediary' in April as part of a case where a woman's pictures had been uploaded on a pornographic website without her consent. Despite court orders, the content could not be removed in entirety from the worldwide web.

The April 20 order issued a direction “to search engines Google Search, Yahoo Search, Microsoft Bing, Duckduckgo to endeavour to use automated tools, to proactively identify and globally disable access to any content which is exactly identical to the offending content that may appear on any other websites/online platforms".

“We’ve filed an appeal against this part of the order and look forward to explaining the steps we take to remove objectionable content from Google Search results,” the spokesperson added.

Google's contention is that a search engine has a different role compared to a social media intermediary such as Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. It had also submitted to the court in April that on the issue of removal of content or blocking access, the role of the search engine is reactive and limited to disabling access to specific uniform resource locators from the search results, once these are reported by governmental agencies or ordered by court. Search engines do not have a proactive role.

“The single judge has misinterpreted and misapplied the new IT Rules, 2021, to the appellant’s search engine. Additionally, the single judge has conflated various sections of the IT Act and separate rules prescribed thereunder, and has passed template orders combining all such offences and provisions, which is bad in law,” Google has said in its appeal against the April 20 judgment.

The court has issued notices to the Centre, Delhi government, Internet Service Providers Association of India, Facebook, the pornographic site and the woman, on whose plea the April ruling had come, and sought their responses to Google’s plea by July 25.