Mississippi's Attorney General is defending his effort to force search giant Google to stop showing results that lead to sites selling illegal or pirated material. A recent New York Times article accused the A-G of working too closely with Google's competitors to disrupt their business.
Attorney General Jim Hood says he has been trying to work with Google for years to convince the company to block sites that it knows are offering illegal drugs and pirated entertainment.
However, Hood says he has had little success.
"If you type in child porn, you can't find anything. If you go to Germany and you type in Nazi, you can't find anything. They can prevent this kind of stuff from coming up. but they don't because they are making Billion at it," Hood said.
The article in the New York Times claims that Hood has been working hand in hand with the Motion Picture Industries and Microsoft to disrupt Google's search business.
A series of emails uncovered as a part of the massive hack of Sony appearing to show Google's competitors collaborating to pressure state attorneys General to go after Google.
Hood does not deny working with industry insiders, saying is not unusual for prosecutors to work with victims, in this case the companies, that have had their work stolen.
"I am telling you, I have fought insurance industries and pharmaceutical industries. A lot of large corporation. I have never seen the arrogance of a company like Google," Hood said.
Google has previously cooperated to change some of its search results.
However, the company says it should not be in the role of deciding what is and is not illegal on the Internet.
Shortly after the conference, Google Chief Legal Counsel Kent Walker wrote in a blog post, "Even though Google takes industry-leading measures in dealing with problematic content on our services, Attorney General Hood proceeded to send Google a sweeping 79-page subpoena, covering a variety of topics over which he lacks jurisdiction."
