Accountant sues Google for libel
22 March 2004
A man who Googled his own name and then found information he did not like is suing the search giant for libel.
Mark Maughan, a certified public accountant, claims that his search delivered "alarming, false, misleading and injurious results" about him and his business.
His search threw up information that incorrectly stated that either he or Brown & Maughan, the company he works for, had been disciplined for gross negligence, for failing to submit a client's claim for refund of overpayment of taxes on time, and for practicing as a CPA without a permit.
The error reportedly occurred as a result of Google's patented PageRank search system which scans the source and reformats text, changing the context.
When he contacted Google, Maugham says he was told that the search engine was not responsible. Google blamed the state accountancy board for the mistake, despite the offending information did not appear on the state board site.
Mr Maugham is also suing AOL, Time Warner and Yahoo! for using the same results.
Apply for your free web assessment - get a complete health check and optimisation action plan from Weboptimiser, the experts.
Related news
|
|
Leading brand search engine marketing since 1996
Founded in 1996 as an SEO company, Weboptimiser is today one of the Internet marketing sector's best-known and most respected search engine optimisation (SEO) and pay per click (PPC) search engine marketing companies.
With a unique portfolio of brand-friendly services, including usability, contextual advertising and web analytics, a pioneering methodology that covers all 4 stages of interaction between a web site and its visitors, we make our clients sites faster, smarter, busier and more profitable.
