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Bettina Wulff settles with Google over Autocomplete name associations

Bettina Wulff, wife of former German president Christian Wulff, sued Google over its Autocomplete feature that combined her name with terms from the red-light district. The search engine automatically generated such suggestions. Google and Wulff reached an out-of-court settlement, and Google independently changed its guidelines. The Federal Court of Justice had ruled in 2013 that Google must delete search suggestions that directly violate personality rights.

Date it happened
2013-01-01
Organisation involved
Google
Product, system or model
Autocomplete
Where this came from
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This incident was imported from sueddeutsche.de. Our additions to it — the structured fields, the translation, the checks against other reports — are published under the same licence.

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