"Trial By Google"

Nah. It’s not one of those internet ads and freebees popping out of your side screens when you open portals or while in the middle of accessing dot coms.

It is a term I first encountered while doing research for a case I was tasked to look into months ago. (And again, due to confidentiality, couldn’t say much.) A blogger used the term to connote the habit of people making judgments out of easily accessible information over the net, particularly those which are accessible from the Google Search Engine, akin to the phrase “Trial by Publicity”.

Let’s just say that in 2003, Google records 112 million searches per day.[1] I guess people just stopped counting from there; it would be like counting the stars. To date, not only does Google produce the majority of search engine traffic in its own right,[2] it also supplies results to practically every major site. Its influence knows no borders and caters no race. As they say, “If your site is not listed in the first page or two of Google results you can expect to receive little search engine traffic.”[3] (Side story: I am reminded of a Law Professor who in his advanced age, who would say this in class – “Who knows what it is? You, Miss, did you google it?" I'm sure Miss Bautista, Miss Caslib, Miss Lee, MissTanedo, and Mr. Manahan knows who he is.)

Google makes the line “the world at your fingerprints” truer than ever. Ask, it shall be answered; knock and the door shall be opened unto you. Key in your name (just like Wesley Gibson did in “Wanted”) and see how the world sees you. Key in a stranger’s name and make judgments on him. Fast and easy.


In 2008, though, the phrase “Trial by Google” has acquired a specialized, not exactly new, meaning. It’s become to stand for the means used by (Australian) jurors to access information out of the courtroom; a way they used to research information on the cases they are currently handling.[4]

Reports reveal that “In one case, a retrial was ordered after two jurors visited the scene of the rape during the trial. In another case, a woman convicted of murder appealed, unsuccessfully, after it emerged a juror had researched her history on the internet.”[5]

And national officials blame both instances to the access of some jurors to information outside the court through Google. Trial by Google, in other words.

As a response, in May 2008, Victorian Attorney General Rob Hulls revealed the attempts of the Australian government “to stamp out the increasing trend of jurors accessing information about cases outside the courtroom, jurors who turn to the internet to undertake their own research during trials will face hefty fines xxx up to $13,000.”[6]

The proposed law seeks to prevent further occurrence of similar cases in the future, and to ensure that jurors and panel members made decisions based only on the evidence in court -- the very essence of due process that every court of justice seeks to uphold.

It might not what makers Page and Brin had in mind when they conceptualized the search engine in 1996, but their creation has definitely been changing society and people’s lives in a very different way.

(for the week 10 to 16 Aug 2008)

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[1] “Don’t say ‘Search Engine’, say ‘Google’. (http://www.1cog.com/search-engine-statistics.html)
[2] ibid
[3] ibid
[4] “Jurors Have Been Warned Off Google” (http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23771432-421,00.html)
[5] ibid
[6] “Victorian Jurors Told to Keep Away from the Internet” (http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23770700-5006785,00.html)