Mexico: Google has to pay a man $ 245 million for fake posts

Google confirmed on Friday that it was sentenced in Mexico to pay him some 245 million dollars a man for allowing the publication of a blog that accused him without evidence of various crimes.

In a brief statement sent to AFP news agency Friday, Google Mexico confirmed the penalty for “moral damage” after the litigation initiated by a lawyer accusing the Internet giant of allowing such publication.

“We regret the sentence (…), which we believe is arbitrary, excessive and groundless. Google will defend itself to the last resort“, reads the note.

This ruling, issued on June 13, “undermines freedom of expression and other fundamental principles and we trust that federal courts will act in strict accordance with the law,” the statement added.

The actor is the lawyer Ulrich Richter Morales, who accuses Google of having allowed the diffusion of a blog that points him as guilty of alleged crimes such as money laundering, trafficking of influence and falsification of documents.

“Speechless,” the lawyer wrote on his Twitter account on Friday, who reproduced the press releases relating to this ruling.

Richter has been asking since 2015 that Google remove the blog from the internet, with eight short entries from 2014, and that it still be searchable.

Given the refusal, Morales Ulrich filed a lawsuit for moral damages, which he won in the first instance in 2021 and which Google has filed an appeal. This case could go all the way to the Supreme Court.

The Mountain View-based US firm has faced similar lawsuits in other countries.

On June 6, an Australian court sentenced New South Wales Premier John Barilaro to pay $ 500,000 in damages for claiming he was vilified in videos by a Google-owned comedian posted on YouTube.

Google lost another million to discrimination

It was also confirmed last Tuesday that the search engine giant will have to pay $ 118 million to settle a class action that accuses it of discriminating against women through their salary and rank in the headquarters that the company has in Mountain View. California, in the United States.

The deal covers approximately 15,500 female employees who have worked in California since September 2013, details a press release released late Friday by the law firms that won class action: Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein and Altshuler Berzon. The company also agreed to allow third parties to conduct a gender-sensitive analysis of its hiring and compensation practices.

“After nearly five years of litigation, both parties have agreed that resolving the case without admission (of liability) or conclusion is in everyone’s best interest. And we are very happy to reach this agreement,” a spokesperson told the agency. Google’s AFP press. .

The complaint was filed by former Google employees in 2017 before a San Francisco court, where they alleged that the internet giant paid women less than men in the same positions and that they had been appointed to lower-ranking positions even though they had experience. and qualifications equivalent to men, under the pretext of being based on their previous salaries.

With information from AFP

DB