Are search results protected by freedom of speech? Google (surprise!) says "yes."
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A report by a prominent First Amendment scholar says just as newspapers get to decide what appears in their pages, the results search engines choose to show to users are protected speech. This is not the answer sought by… basically anyone who doesn’t like their search results. But it would seem to lift the veil for all of us who might have been under the impression that search engines were somehow innately objective and fair. Of course, this is just one (presumably bought-and-paid-for) law professor’s opinion. And it might not hold up in countries that don’t have robust speech protections like ours.
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