Jennifer Lawrence Nude Photo Leak Forces Google to Remove All Images From Search Engine Results
Celebrities, who threatened to file a $100 million lawsuit against Google, got what they wanted when the search engine giant removed thousands of hacked images from search results. Google then proceeded to shut down accounts of users who had posted the images.
The lawsuit is connected to the hacking incident that resulted in hundreds of nude photos of celebrities being posted online. These photos were stored online on Apple iCloud accounts that hackers broke into. Subsequently, the stolen images were posted online and were never taken down by Google for weeks, which led to the threat of the lawsuit.
Google was threatened with a lawsuit by lawyer Martin Singer on October 1st. Singer is thought to represent several celebrities including Kim Kardashian, Hayden Panettiere, Amber Heard and Vanessa Hudgens, who had their photos stolen and posted online. However, Singer never named any of his clients in his letter to Google's lawyers and founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
CIO Today notes that Singer in the letter that was also posted on Scribd accused Google of failing to remove the photos quickly. He also went on to accuse Google of "making millions and profiting from the victimization of women." Deadline also notes that in the letter Singer quoted Google's 'Don't Be Evil' motto and described it as a sham.
With Google deciding to remove the photos from search results and image searches it joins sites like Twitter who have removed the images. However, as Singer pointed out in his letter addressed to Google, Twitter was quick to accommodate demands to remove the stolen images, where as Google did not initially respond to over a dozen requests. Finally CIO Today notes that after the threat of a costly lawsuit Google finally took action.
