Google on Wednesday appealed an April 20 judgement (pdf) by the Delhi High Court that it said would essentially lead to Google Search being classified as a social media intermediary under the law. A division bench of the Delhi High Court on Wednesday issued notice on the appeal, CNBC-TV18 reported. The April 20 order came in a case filed against multiple tech companies by a petitioner who found her social media pictures uploaded on adult sites, which were then cached by Google Search. While Google removed outdated cached results, the petitioner said that the images were reappearing on other sites, leading the court to order the company to proactively remove all similar images when approached by law enforcement. In a statement to the media on the 82 page judgment pronounced by a single judge bench, Google said: Search engines are a reflection of the content and information that is available on the Internet. And while we maintain a consistent policy over removal of objectionable content from search results, the Delhi High Court order has cast certain obligations that would wrongly classify Google search as a social media intermediary. The direction also requires proactively identifying and globally disabling access to any content which may be similar to the offending content, that may appear on any other websites/online platforms, or in any other context. We’ve filed an appeal against this part of the order and look forward to explaining the steps we take to remove objectionable content from Google search results. [emphasis…
