Google Search goes after fraudulent and manipulative DMCA takedown requests

Google has filed a lawsuit in the northern district of California against two men who allegedly used the DMCA takedown request mechanism to try to remove competitor URLs from the search results. You can read the PDF document of the lawsuit over here; it says:“Google brings this action to stop Defendants’ systematic abuse of Google accounts tosubmit a barrage of fraudulent copyright takedown requests aimed at removing hundreds of thousandsof their competitors’ website URLs from Google Search results. The lawsuit claims that two individuals created at least 65 Google accounts to submit thousands of fake DMCA claims. Google clearly wants to send a message to anyone trying to use the DMCA takedown request to harm competitors withing Google Search or to try to boost their own rankings by removing those listings above them. We believe this is the first lawsuit filed by Google over such allegations and it may not be the last.