Introduction to What Is Google?

Defendant Google continues to file boiler-plate types of responses, citing inappropriate legal precedents such as Milkovich v Lorain Journal, Langdon v Google, Search King v Google Tech, and Zhang v Baidu. This case is not about expanded free speech of the press. It is not about AdWords suppression, which Langon v Google concerns. Search King v. Google is about competing search companies, also not of concern here. And Zhang v Baidu is about suppression of pro-democracy propaganda, also quite irrelevant to this case.

Running throughout every Google document filed is the notion, repeated over and over again, that Google is a publisher and has "opinions" and "editorial judgments." This is the self-proclaimed Emperor Norton or the King's New Clothes on display; humorous, perhaps, but not appropriate in a court of law. As we showed in the previous document (THE CASE FOR CONTINUING THE CASE AGAINST GOOGLE—AND REJECTING ITS DEMURRER REQUEST), no one considers Google a publisher other than Google. Standard use of the English language, as amply discussed in the cited document, does not allow Google to cast itself as a publisher. Google's search algorithm does not think as sentient human publishers do, and it certainly does not have opinions; it can, however, program bias into search results.  While precedent may be useful, common sense, logic, and standard use of English-language words must be prevail for this case to have meaning.

(Google also needs to quite talking about the Communications Decency Act. It is a non-issue—never has been—as the ad code in the nudist colony story was removed per Google's request.)

But an important question does remain: just what is Google? The next document, What Is Google?, will show that Google is an advertising broker, which is how it makes money, and not its free search engine, which is heavily biased in favor of Google properties and AdWords customers. It is the means by which ad-broker Google has gotten extremely rich at the expense of honest news organizations and publishers, causing the near collapse of a once great industry.
 
 
By Dr. S. Louis Martin