June 26, 2006

A New York politician has dropped a lawsuit against Google that had claimed the search engine company profited from child pornography.

A member of the Nassau County Legislature named Jeffrey Toback had filed a lawsuit in May claiming that Google had "paid links" to certain websites that contained child pornography. "They take money from these sites," he said at the time.

A Google spokesman at the time denied the allegations and said the company takes numerous steps to prevent access to child pornography.

"When we find or are made aware of any child pornography, we remove it from our products, including our search engine," spokesman Steve Langdon said. "We also report it to the appropriate law enforcement officials and fully cooperate with the law enforcement community to combat child pornography."

Langdon said on Thursday that the Mountain View, Calif.-based company was "pleased that the suit has been dismissed and believe it was completely without merit."

The suit was initially filed in state Supreme Court in Mineola, but was later moved to federal court in White Plains. A "notice of discontinuance" dropping the suit was filed in federal court on Wednesday.

Toback, who has sponsored local legislation raising the age that teenagers can legally buy cigarettes to 19 and limiting teen access to tanning salons, said last month that he filed the lawsuit because oversight of Google was beyond the purview of county legislators.

Toback said Thursday he dropped the lawsuit because "Google has offered to sit down and discuss the issues. They didn't want to do that while litigation was pending, so we're taking them up on their offer."

He said a meeting would be scheduled with Google officials "at their earliest convenience" to discuss what he termed "very serious issues."

Source: Mercury News