Being a search engine, new IT rules donâ€™t apply to us, Google tells Delhi HC

A week back, Sundar Pichai, CEO, Google, had said that it was committed to complying with the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules 2021, which came into effect from May 26, 2021.

A week later, Google, while approaching the Delhi High Court has said that it is an aggregator and not a social media intermediary and hence, doesn’t come within the purview of the IT Rules, 2021. The new IT Rules define ‘social media intermediary’ as “an intermediary which primarily or solely enables online interaction between two or more users and allows them to create, upload, share, disseminate, modify or access information using its services” [Rule 1 (w)], while ‘significant social media intermediary’, which has been defined as “a social media intermediary having a number of registered users in India above such threshold as notified by the Central Government [Rule 1 (v)].

A Bar and Bench report states that Google has approached the Delhi High Court following a judgement by a single judge bench, which characterised Google as a ‘significant social media intermediary’, in a case where a woman had moved the court seeking removal of her private photos that had been posted on pornographic illegally. Bar and Bench reported, “The Court had, thereafter, passed a detailed order on directions to be issued to search engines and intermediaries to deal with similar situations.”

In its appeal to the High Court, Google maintained that the single judge order had “mischaracterised” the Internet giant as a “significant social media intermediary”, as defined by the IT Rules 2021.

Google, Twitter name grievance redressal officers, but...

Meanwhile, with the new IT Rules coming into effect, Google’ website mentions Jon Grier as the person to be approached “to serve any summons or notices in civil proceedings against Google LLC in India”. The address given is that of Mountain View, USA, while the email address is: support-in@google.com

Google has separate grievance redressal mechanisms for YouTube and for all other Google products other than YouTube, as well as a separate grievance centre for Google Pay in India. Google’s website states that the email ID – support-in@google.com – is not to be used to submit requests related to removal of content.

Twitter, too, has named Dharmendra Chatur as the interim Resident Grievance Officer for India. Globally, Calironia-based Jeremy Kessel is to be approached for grievance redressal. Twitter had been resisting sending in its compliance report to the IT Rules, 2021. Twitter is yet to name its compliance officer and nodal officer.

Both Google and Twitter have not stuck to the guidelines mandated by the IT Rules, 2021 regarding appointment of their respective grievance officers. As per the IT Rules, 2021: the social media intermediary has to appoint a “resident grievance officer” who has to be an “employee of a significant social media intermediary, who is resident in India.” [Rule 4 (c)]

As per this guideline, Google’s grievance officer Jon Grier is not a resident of India, but based in the US, while Dharmendra Chatur, who Twitter has named as the interim Resident Grievance Officer for India, is not an employee of the microblogging site, but is a partner with the law firm that is representing Twitter.