Google thaws. A little. Since this article was written, there seems to have been a slight thaw on the part of Google's removal evaluation team. Lawyers are Shadow Making now reporting that a few requests are now being processed - some of which were previously denied by Google. Unfortunately, other requests are still denied, and Google continues to refuse to communicate what it will or won't do, or why it previously denied certain requests and then chose to grant them. Here are some examples of cases these attorneys have told me about in which Google Shadow Making has refused to act: A company spent two years and several hundred thousand dollars pursuing a court order establishing defamation on a Ripoff report page to ask Google to remove the URL. A real estate agent has been defamed and harassed for months via weekly posts by someone who clashed with them over paying rent.
These posts falsely accused the real estate agent of being a criminal, and the defendant made other false claims via online reviews. The real estate agent sued in a typical legal proceeding that had been pending for over a year, and it was determined that the IP Shadow Making address responsible for the defamatory content was linked to the defamator. Subpoenas had been issued, but before the records were received, the defendant admitted to Shadow Making posting the content and, based on this, a court order was obtained identifying the material as defamatory. Google initially agreed to remove the URLs, but some were not removed due to a clerical error in which a character was missing from the links.
After reporting this error and after months of communications, Google then requested more information to prove that the defendant had written the articles. Ultimately, Google denied the removal request despite the plaintiff's and Shadow Making defendant's attorneys repeatedly offering to provide additional information. Subsequently, Google reinstated the links they had previously removed. Google then asked for more information to prove that the defendant had written the articles. Ultimately, Google denied the removal request despite the plaintiff's and Shadow Making defendant's attorneys repeatedly offering to provide additional information. Subsequently, Google reinstated the links they had previously removed. Google then asked for more information to prove that the defendant had written the articles.