Philosopher - 4:44 pm on Oct 1, 2010 (gmt 0)

But it sure looks like the actual crux, in this particular conviction, is that a web entity was penalized for something an automated process did, even though it happened to be 100% correct.

Actually, as mentioned, according to the law in France, for Google to make that suggestion/statement, it has to PROVE it is 100% correct. If it can't, it doesn't matter if it's automated or not, it's illegal.

I'm getting pretty tired of the "it's an algo so we aren't responsible" excuse. An algo starts with a human programmer and is continually refined by a human programmer. It is the product of a human programmer and should be held to the same laws as...a human programmer.