Legal Status of Search Engines

An internet user does not always know for sure which web-site he/she needs to surf in order to get the proper information, that is why in the majority of cases people use search engines. Search engines are the intermediaries between an Internet user and the information that can be found there: the search engine helps to correlate the request and the relevant web pages, and therefore benefits both: the web-site and the requester. While the search engines had begun to play a sufficient role in the IT industry, litigation began to appear together with the government’s interest in regulation of the above-mentioned sphere. Thus, search engines have established themselves as a necessary Internet element, but with an open question of their legal status. This paper examines the question on the legal status of the search engines, as well as the correlation with the category of the Internet intermediary. Besides, this research studies the limitations imposed on the search engines by law or court decision and considers some other particular aspects of search regulation. For now the legal status of the search engine is not sufficiently developed because there have been done more researches on the narrower issues, e.g. the right to be forgotten, liability for copyright infringement. This particular tendency elucidates the search engines only in some parts but does not allow to make a more systematic review of the problem. It is also worth mentioning that such a broad view on the issue of search engines’ legal status is useful for determining the trends in legal regulation and court practice.