Google declares war on Hollywood … and Mississippi

Google headquarters in Mountain View Friday Mar. 27, 2010. Despite all the bells and whistles of Android phones, language translation, Gmail, web browsers, cloud computing and its myriad other products, almost everything Google does still comes back to search, which accounted for 97 percent of the company's $24 billion in revenues last year. And what search really comes down to is relevance, which at Google is the province of a small group of engineers, a sort of geek all-star team that has been with Google almost since the beginning. (Photo by Patrick Tehan/Mercury News) — Google headquarters in Mountain View Friday Mar. 27, 2010. Despite all the bells and whistles of Android phones, language translation, Gmail, web browsers, cloud computing and its myriad other products, almost everything Google does still comes back to search, which accounted for 97 percent of the company’s $24 billion in revenues last year. And what search really comes down to is relevance, which at Google is the province of a small group of engineers, a sort of geek all-star team that has been with Google almost since the beginning. (Photo by Patrick Tehan/Mercury News)

By Matt O'Brien | The Associated Press

PUBLISHED: December 19, 2014 at 3:51 a.m. | UPDATED: August 12, 2016 at 4:47 a.m.

We are deeply concerned about recent reports that the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) led a secret, coordinated campaign to revive the failed SOPA legislation through other means, and helped manufacture legal arguments in connection with an investigation by Mississippi State Attorney General Jim Hood. — Kent Walker, Google s senior vice president and chief counsel

Google is striking back at the Motion Picture Association of America for allegedly coordinating a secret anti-Google alliance of Hollywood studios, politicians and rival companies, such as Microsoft, to provoke a government campaign against the Mountain View search engine giant. A sharply worded blog post Thursday from top Google lawyer Kent Walker compared the campaign, code-named Project Goliath, as an attempt to revive the mission of the unpopular Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, which Internet users and Silicon Valley companies helped defeat in 2012.

Reports this month from The Verge and The New York Times reveal how far the MPAA and its allies have apparently gone to get state prosecutors to target Google.

This morning, according to The Verge, Google has responded by suing Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood, one of the state prosecutors enlisted in the Hollywood-backed campaign to get Google to block pirated content from its search engine.