A California Superior Court judge ruled that Google had a First Amendment right to arrange its search results without outside direction. A website CoastNews had argued that Google had unfairly put it in the lower echelon of search results hurting its business. CoastNews and such companies as Yelp and Travelocity are fearful that Google can favor its own travel and restaurant websites to the detriment of its rivals. The ruling came in Google’s anti-SLAPP lawsuit. (GigaOm, November 17, 2014, by Jeff John Roberts)
CoastNews had argued that Bing and Yahoo put them in first place as evidence that Google was treating them unfairly and also said Google punished them for posting content the company did not approve of. UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh said that Google’s First Amendment rights were bolstered by the recent lawsuit brought against the Chinese search engine Baidu, sued for censoring the political views of American users. A federal district judge ruled that the search engine could do what it liked, given its protection under the First Amendment. (Ars Technica, November 17, 2014, by Megan Geuss)