Google & Nazis

Google, the search engine that became a verb and also a news service, has been providing its estimated 5.9 million users with news from the National Vanguard a publication of the white supremacist group, the National Alliance. Likewise, Google Germany was providing news to readers from National Zeitung, a neo-Fascist newspaper.

Recently, Internet News reported that both the U.S. Google News and Google Germany would remove the racist and fascist hate speech from its news index service.

The Internet News article goes on to make the case that this is not a First Amendment issue because Google is making an editorial decision,

"The collision of hate speech and automated publishing is a waterloo that other Internet companies have faced."

Other internet companies here is a reference to Yahoo and eBay. In 2000, a number of French organizations, including International League Against Racism & Anti-Semitism sued Yahoo, to get them to stop selling Nazi memorabilia through the French Yahoo portal. Though the French were initially successful, it's Yahoo that looks to be the winner of this battle as the back-and-forth court decisions continue. In 2001 eBay ban any listings on its service that "promote or glorify hatred, violence or racial intolerance, or items that promote organizations with such views (e.g., KKK, Nazis, neo-Nazis, Skinhead Aryan Nation)."