A few days ago, the search engine based on Mountain View announced (through its official blog at the address: http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2012/08/an-update-to-our-search-algorithms.html) that, after the analysis on the state of the web taken some months ago, it will put online a new revision of its search algorythm, specifically designed to contrast audiovisual piracy.

Starting from next week, Google shall keep track of the number of valid copyright violation reports received against a specific website, and move it down the search results, should the number of such reports be relevantly high.

Theoretically, the method has been studied to reduce the visibility of most websites expressly dedicated to illegal file sharing.
However, it is still unclear the scenario that will outline, following a copyright infringement report:

- if the report is correctly filed, but its contents are wrong, an automated “downgrade” of the website in Google’s search results would cause severe damage to the website, both in terms of visibility and economic support from any advertising sponsors it might have;

- if the report is correct in form and content, instead, one might wonder why the penalty should be limited to “lowering” such website on the search results, instead of removing it entirely, as the search engine has been doing so far.

While awaiting to see how the online research giant will enact the announced actions, we can only note that the new mechanism seems to be set to deepen and speed up in some way the monitoring of search results, while at the same time avoiding to enact those pre-emptive and capillary measures requested by many players of the audiovisual market, which would deprive Google of its “mere conduit” role, on which it based all its defenses in front of European and international Courts so far.