Google LLC v Defteros [2022] HCA 27, decided 17 August 2022 by High Court of Australia.
The High Court decided that for the purposes of defamation law, Google is not a publisher of a newspaper article when providing a link to the article in search engine results and a short summary of the article.
"The question which arises here is whether
providing search results which, in response to an enquiry, direct the attention
of a person to the webpage of another and assist them in accessing it amounts
to an act of participation in the communication of defamatory matter. ...
It is not suggested that [Google] itself communicated the defamatory matter in the Underworld article, which appeared on The Age's website. Unlike the defendants in the innocent dissemination cases, [Google] did not do so by selling, distributing or otherwise disseminating the matter complained of. ...
The question of whether the appellant could be said to participate comes down to the assistance provided by the hyperlink to move to another webpage. This is not a strong basis for liability and it finds no support in existing authority in Australia or recent cases elsewhere."