A former Tory local council candidate has failed in his libel action against Google over comments posted about him on a blog.
Payam Tamiz started legal proceedings against Google after allegedly defamatory comments were written about him on the London Muslim section of Blogger.com.
Google argued that it had no control over any of the content and had no way of knowing whether the comments posted were true or not.
In a written judgement handed down at the high court on Friday, Mr Justice Eady said Google should not be regarded as a publisher under the established principles of the common law.
Eady said that even if Google was regarded as the publisher of the offending words, it would be exempted from liability in accordance with regulation 19 of the European Union's electronic commerce directive 2002.
