Ex-banker reaches settlement with Google over removal of ‘vile and abusive’ internet posts
An ex-banker has reached a settlement with Google over "vile and abusive" internet posts, having previously argued that the firm should do more to remove them.
Daniel Hegglin, a British businessman who used to for work Morgan Stanley, had been targeted by an anonymous internet troll and wrongly called a paedophile and a Ku Klux Klan sympathiser.
He initially asked Google to to prevent the abusive material appearing on search engines in England and Wales.
Google wanted him to provide a list of web links to take offline, however his lawyers argued that there were over 3,600 websites, and regularly repeating this process would be costly and time-consuming.
Today his lawyers told a High Court judge that Google made "significant efforts" to remove the material, the BBC reports, and that a settlement was reached on Sunday.
According to the BBC, Antony White QC who was acting for Google, said that the company had "considerable sympathy" for Hegglin:
[It was an] exceptional case of internet trolling interms of its prominence and volume
Google provides search services to millions of people and cannot be responsible for policing internet content
It will however continue to apply its procedures that have been developed to assist with the removal of content which breaches applicable local laws