Perth transport tycoon Sir Brian Souter has suspended his campaign against Google after his official website was reinstated to the search engine’s listings.
Despite making progress in his own campaign after his website mysteriously disappeared from search results, Sir Brian is still pledging to pass on the details of other affected parties to MPs.
He had accused Google of censoring what the public can see on the internet and restricting free speech and had appealed for others who had seen their sites apparently de-listed to contact him.
With the website www.briansouter.com back near the top of search results, Sir Brian said on Thursday: ”As long as my website continues to be available for people to see on Google, I am content to suspend the campaign.
”This was a freedom of speech issue and it has shown that I am not alone in suffering at the hands of Google.
”I will be passing a dossier of complaints from other aggrieved website owners to Westminster’s culture, media and sport committee. Justice has been done and I am satisfied with the outcome.”
Gordon Beattie, Sir Brian’s PR and media adviser, said Google had attempted to explain away the controversy as being the result of a technical matter.
He said: ”It has been suggested by Google that the site was reinstated after we followed their suggestion of redirecting the non www version of the domain to Sir Brian’s website.
”We don’t accept that. We implemented their suggestion more than two weeks ago and the site continued to be blocked until Sir Brian went public.”