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| Ballymascanlon House Hotel |
Who'd book a room if there was a chance that room wouldn't be available when needed? Where's a guest to go for a night's sleep?
The problem, as far as the hotel owners are concerned, is all on Google's end, and they've sued the search engine for the misleading data.
The autocomplete feature on the search engine was adding "receivership" to the search terms, which naturally would lead the inquiring party to assume there was something wrong. There's nothing amiss out there in County Louth, but who knows how many potential tourists ticked Ballymascanlon House off their list of potential lodgings.
That's all lost business to the Quinn family who own the property.
They've taken action in the High Court, but like so many other cases involving modern technology, there isn't a set precedent for the courts to follow. It isn't as if Google Ireland set out to cast aspersions on the resort, or that the electronic entity wanted to drive the hotel out of business. More likely, it's the way the program works, and it clearly isn't perfect.
The Quinns would like the courts to make Google fix the bug, which Google didn't do when the Quinns complained in the first place. The judge in the case is forced to drag out proceedings, but only because it's gone off on such a new tack.
There's defamation, to be sure, but is it defamation when a computer randomly inserts words based on something someone might have inquired about when using the service to see if the hotel was definitely still open?
Or is it a case of Google being too lazy to make an adjustment unless forced by law?
The lawsuit may get fast-tracked to the Commercial Court, but there's the risk of setting a dangerous precedent to be considered as well.
Don't expect a quick resolution to the problem, unless Google determines that it is cheaper to fix the glitch in the program than to continue litigating the suit.
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