Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll have heard about the scandal in Italy involving four employees of Google. If you have been away for a while, let’s recap. In 2006 a particularly disturbing video of some children bullying an autistic classmate was posted on YouTube, a subsidiary of the Google giant. Google’s Vice President Matt Sucherman claims that the video was removed mere hours after being notified by the police. That hasn’t stopped the Italian courts from finding some of those very same executives guilty of privacy violations.
Whatever your thoughts on the matter, it might just be a good thing for YouTube. You see, the crux of the problem is that there isn’t really a way to instantaneously remove objectionable content because the search engine spiders aren’t able to find it. Instead, YouTube has to rely on someone seeing the video and notifying them, by which time it’s already on its way all around the internet. Maybe this is just the incentive that Google needs to fine tune its system and increase its video search capabilities. This will certainly make it easier for marketers who rely on video advertising.
Don’t believe there’s a silver lining to this? What about Google’s fingerprinting technology that allows for the identification of pirated media clips on YouTube? That only came about as a result of legal issues regarding copyright infringements. We’ll just have to wait and see if Google can make the best out of a bad situation.
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