Google has free speech right in search results, court confirms

A San Francisco court ruled that Google has the right to arrange its search results as it pleases, which confirms the company’s long-held position, while underscoring the stark difference in how US and European authorities seek to regulate the search giant.

The new ruling, which is the first since 2007 to address Google’s rights under the First Amendment, came after a website called CoastNews argued that Google had unfairly pushed it far down in its search results -- even though, CoastNews claimed, its site appeared at the top of results created by Bing and Yahoo. CoastNews suggested the poor rankings were because Google wanted to eliminate CoastNews as a potential competitor.