Google Makes Legal Services Stand Out
Google has long received criticism for providing the possibility to find illegal downloads on the Web. The company has decided to apply some changes to the search engine. The entertainment industry, which undergoes severe income loss due to piracy, mostly welcomed those modifications.
Google is going to suppress illegal search results and highlight official resources. It will now point users towards official and legal alternatives like Spotify, which will be shown first. This isn't a new mechanism, but it has been refined.
The company will also provide two boxes (above the search results and on the right-hand side of the page) where legal services can be listed. There is only one peculiarity to take into account: these will be ads, i.e. the sites will have to pay for the placement.
The BPI, the music trade group, does not totally agree with the measures and awaits further actions to be taken to form a stronger digital music sector. At the same time, Google believes that the real solution of the piracy problem lies in quality improvement of legal services more than in the chase after illegal ones.