On May 12, 2016, a Federal Court in Florida refused to dismiss a lawsuit alleging that Google’s various statements about its search results, including that “[i]t is Google’s policy not to censor search results,” are false, deceptive and misleading. The chief complaint is that Google, contrary to its public pronouncements, made all of the Plaintiff company’s’ websites disappear from all possible Google search results. Since Google controls 70% of the U.S. search market and 90% of the European search market, this is equivalent to making the websites virtually disappear from the internet. Nova Southeastern University's Copyright Officer, Stephen Carlisle, J.D., takes a look at the allegations and the Court’s decision and finds it’s mostly a case of Google stating “we don’t do this…except when we do.”
