French blogger fined for bad food review

​Like any other food blogger, Caroline Doudet wrote a bad review on her blog, Cultur'elle, when she didn't enjoy her experience at a restaurant.

But the French blogger was later fined by a judge because the review was too prominent on the Google search results.

She was sued by the owner of Il Giardino restaurant in the Aquitaine region of southwestern France after she posted a review entitled The place to Avoid in Cap-Ferret: Il Giardino.

The restaurant owner said that the prominence of the review, in which she complained of poor service and the owner's poor attitude, on Google search results hurt his business.

The review appeared fourth in the results of Google, after a search of the restaurant's name. 

So the judge decided that the blog's title should be changed, so that the phrase 'the place to avoid' was less prominent on Google.

Doudet was also ordered to pay a fine of 1,500 euros (S$2,520). 

She was upset about the court's decision and said to the BBC: "This decision creates a new crime of being too high ranked on a search engine, or for having too great an influence."

The lifestyle blogger added: "What is perverse is that we look for bloggers who are influential, but only if they are nice about people."

Source: BBC