Google has been ordered to disable part of its autocomplete function in Japan after complaints it violates privacy. The Tokyo District Court approved a petition by the man, who claimed typing his name into the search engine generated a suggestion linking him to crimes he did not commit, lawyer Hiroyuki Tomita said.
If a user accepts the search suggestion, thousands of results are produced that imply criminality of which the man is not guilty, Tomita said.
Lawyer Hiroyuki Tomita said the effect on the man’s reputation has meant he has found it hard to find work.
Google has so far not carried out the court’s request – but said it was “reviewing the order”.
“A Japanese court issued a provisional order requesting Google to delete specific terms from autocomplete,” the company said in a statement on Monday.
“The judge did not require Google to completely suspend the autocomplete function.”
Auto-complete is a function provided by many search engines that predicts what a user may be looking for. It is often based on what previous users have searched for when they typed the same initial letters of a word.
Tomita said the auto-complete function was problematic because it guides users to sites that may contain false or misleading information.
“It could lead to irretrievable damage such as a loss of job or bankruptcy just by showing search results that constitute defamation or a violation of the privacy of an individual person or small and medium-sized companies,” Mr Tomita told Japanese news agency Kyodo.
Google has responded to the man’s complaints by saying that since the results are compiled automatically there is no intrusion of privacy.
“These searches are produced by a number of factors including the popularity of search terms,” the company said.
“Google does not determine these terms manually – all of the queries shown in autocomplete have been typed previously by other Google users.”
The petition was approved by the court on March 19, but Google has so far refused to take action, saying Japanese law does not apply to its US headquarters and its own corporate privacy policy, Tomita told reporters.
It is not the first time the feature has come under scrutiny. In December 2010, Google tweaked autocomplete so that terms relating to piracy did not automatically appear.
However, the company attracted further criticism after it refused to remove sites hosting illegal copyright material from its search results.
