Volokh makes the case that Google is a publisher

Is Google search an intermediary like the phone company - simply connecting people with the information they seek? Or is Google search a publisher, like a newspaper, which provides only the information that it sees fit and is protected by the First Amendment? There are good reasons for Google to want to be considered a mere connector; like other Internet companies, it can beg off responsibility for what is transmitted by its users. That is the useful stance when it comes to rebutting claims of copyright infringement or libel. But when the issue is anti-competitive behavior - a charge made by rivals and some businesses - Google has lately been emphasizing that it sees itself as a publisher, and it is appealing for different kinds of protections, in the realm of free speech. How Google has decided to say this is almost as interesting as what is being said. The company hired Eugene Volokh, an influential conservative blogger and a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, to write a paper last month. In it, he argues that Google search results are protected speech. Volokh freely acknowledges that the paper, posted on his blog and shared widely on the Internet, is not academic scholarship but a piece of advocacy, written in his capacity as an academic affiliate at a Los Angeles law firm, Mayer Brown. It is something that would typically be prepared if Google were facing a trial on these issues. There is no such court case at the moment that Volokh is pointing toward with his paper, but Google has become a target over how it runs its search engine. Competitors and some companies say Google\'s search algorithms favor services owned by Google, a charge Google denies, but one that has drawn the attention of regulators in Europe and the United States. In September, Google\'s chairman, Eric E. Schmidt, was called before a Senate antitrust panel to defend his company\'s practices. The chairman of the subcommittee, Herb Kohl, D-Wis., put the question bluntly: \"Is it possible for Google to be both an unbiased search engine and at the same time own a vast portfolio of Web-based products and services?\" Schmidt\'s response was measured. He noted that if Google stopped providing helpful search results people would start using other search engines. He also said that profit motives would not distort Google\'s search results. \"I\'m not sure Google is a rational business trying to maximize its own profits,\" he said.