Bad day for Google?

An Italian court's decision to convict three Google executives last week for allowing a video to be posted online is already attracting significant criticism.

The video, showing an autistic boy being bullied at a school in Turin, was posted on Google Video in 2006. It was removed as soon as it was brought to Google's attention. The person who uploaded the video was traced with Google's help and later convicted.

The Google employees were found guilty in a criminal prosecution of violating the victim's privacy by not seeking his consent before the video was posted. The decision has been called "ridiculous" by the UK's previous Information Commissioner and an "outraged" Google intends to appeal.

If the decision stands, there is concern (although I suspect this is a bit of a knee-jerk reaction) that social networks and the like will simply disappear from the internet because it is impossible for companies to vet every bit of content uploaded to their sites and they would not want to be held criminally liable for that content. It also seems to be at odds with the spirit of the European Commission's attempts to protect free movement of information services on the internet. In particular, E-Commerce Directive specifically protects ISPs from liability for certain offences where they simply provide caching or hosting services, or act as conduits for information, without actually monitoring or creating the content - this is the exemption that most ISPs and hosting providers currently rely on.

And the court decision is not the end of Google's problems. It was also reported last week that the European Commission has asked the company to comment on allegations that it is acting anti-competitively in the way that it filters and ranks web pages. Three separate companies have made complaints that Google ranks pages at the expense of competing search engines. Google has until next week to respond.

With the ongoing dispute about Chinese censorship and the future of Google Books hanging in the balance, Google seems to be having a really bad day (or month) at the office.....