Arindam Chaudhuri, a famous personality, has sued Google, Delhi Press, Penguin Publishers and Siddartha Deb for publishing a defamatory article about him and IIPM. The article by Siddartha Deb is a 10,000 word essay which is well researched and published. And Mr. Chaudhuri sued them all for a meager 50 crore rupees (US$11 million).

The article is titled ‘Sweet Smell of Success’ with a strapline of ‘How Arindam Chaudhuri made a fortune off the aspirations—and insecurities—of India’s middle classes’. It can be found online easily by googling the byline. A link from CaravanMagazine should appear on Google. Why am I not providing the link? Who knows with these lawsuits? Not sure about other things but these days everybody’s got a lawsuit.

The article isn’t the point of this discussion nor the three parties involved in the lawsuit nor the meager sum involved in the lawsuit. The real point of this discussion is suing Google. Mr. Chadhuri suing Google is the most hilarious and the most ‘thought provoking’ thing I have heard in a very long time. Exact reasons of why Google is involved are not known but I can make an educated guess. Google brought up the search results for the article in question. If that’s not preposterous enough then wait for these comments from Koena Mitra and Esha Koppikhar :

Some actors demand accountability from the website. “If I type my name, there are all sort of search names and tags that come up. Google should probably become like imdb and verify all our details through us,” says actor Koena Mitra. Actor Eesha Koppikhar says, “Google should have a censor mechanism that scrutinises content before it is put up.” (HT)

Google should verify details before they can show results about Koena Mitra? And who is Koena Mitra by the way? Does Google really care who Koena Mitra is? Heck do we really care who Koena Mitra is?  Eesha Koppikhar thinks Google should censor stuff. Oh! yeah, how about having some censors for some of those movies first?

Google is a conduit to reach to the information. If information itself is the problem, there isn’t much Google can do. One is better off suing the content creators rather than the messengers. And the curation everyone is talking about: it is not easy to curate the Internet. Google can’t do it and Google shouldn’t be doing it. Google is an aggregator of sorts and not a curator. If Google curates, then it will turn the Internet into a big police state.

Google has shown the results about an article about Mr. Chaudhuri the same way it shows the results about IIPM when someone types it. There is a whole industry around the way to guess on how the results should appear on Google. It is called search engine optimization (SEO). I am sure Mr. Chaudhuri knows it well because the first link on Google for the term ‘IIPM’ leads to his institution’s website. That didn’t happen magically.

If Google is a conduit, the Internet is a bigger conduit which enables a conduit called Google.

Next time around when you find a search engine showing results you don’t like, sue the Internet.