Google, the world's biggest search engine, is being sued by a London businessman in a landmark legal action that could hold the US-based company liable for the publication of inaccurate, malicious or damaging material on the internet.

The case, the first of its kind in this country that seeks to make search engines responsible for the content of the internet - could trigger severe restrictions on the free flow of information on the web. Last night, internet experts warned that if the action was successful it would mean Google could be held liable for the content of 11.5 billion web pages.

The case is being brought by a 48-year-old man from Wembley who has instructed a City law firm to begin defamation proceedings after the search engine directed users to web pages that the businessman claims contained "deeply offensive and commercially damaging" material about his enterprises.

In one anonymous posting on an internet discussion forum, Brian Retkin, managing director of the internet company dotworlds, is wrongly accused of cashing in on the 11 September attacks on America by offering the free registration of domain names to the US in a way that took advantage of the fervent patriotism at the time. In other anonymous postings, he is wrongly and groundlessly accused of conducting fraudulent business. The allegations are believed to have originated in America, where it is much more difficult to succeed in a libel claim.

US judges have ruled that search engines and other third party internet service and product providers are immune from defamation lawsuits. But in Britain, similar legal protection is conditional on the company not having notice of the complaint. And in Britain that area of the law is yet to be fully tested. Mr Retkin, whose internet company is a domain name registrar (a company that allows customers to register domain names on the internet), says he has spent three years trying to persuade Google to permanently remove the libellous allegations from its search results.

In a letter sent to Google, Franklin Price, a litigation partner at the law firm Jeffery Green Russell, has given formal notice of the defamation action under the court's pro-action protocol.

"There comes a point," said Mr Retkin, "when someone must take responsibility for this material. These allegations were posted anonymously so there is no way of suing the author. Where it has appeared on internet discussion forums we have asked them to remove it but it keeps popping up again at other internet addresses. The only solution is for Google to remove it and give an undertaking they will remove it permanently."

In legal correspondence between Mr Retkin and Google, a California-based company with sales and marketing offices in London, claims it has "blacklisted" the offending links and removed the material complained of by Mr Retkin. It also rejects the idea that it should be responsible for the contents of links produced in an internet search.

In an email written by Google's legal counsel Harjinder Obhi, the company argues: "Google is not responsible for the content of any result of a query which may be presented to a user of Google's web search service. Google has absolutely no connection, control or ability to direct or influence the content of web pages which may be shown as links within any given set of search results."

Source: Independent.co.uk

One of the goals of Google News is to enable readers to read the news in the way that works best for them. In looking at how people use Google News and based on feedback we've received, we've found that many people prefer to read the news in a more visual way. As a result, over the last few months we have been working on Google News Image Version. (http://news.google.com/news?imv=1)

The Image Version of News lets you view and explore the top headlines of the day through photos instead of just text.

When you roll over an image on the left, it exposes the full snippet and link to the related article on the right side of the page. Clicking on an image will take users directly to the article the image came from. In addition, users can search for image search results. For example, searching for Iraq in Image View would give the following results. (http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=&imv=1&q=Iraq&btnG=Search+News)

Even if you prefer a standard headlines page, viewing News through Images can be very useful. One classic example is sports. If you want to see the latest action, Image version lets you view the photos for a given team or for a specific game.

Google is pretty excited to add this to the Google News experience, so give it a try and let them know what you think at http://groups.google.com/group/googlenews-help

Source: Official Google News Blog