He called the continued appearance of those criticisms “pure and utter libel,” and believes they were initially posted by business competitors. Retkin said the domain offers in question were “perfectly legitimate.”

At this point, Retkin thinks Google has removed about 15,000 links from its international search engines, like Google.co.uk. On that site, a query for dotworlds scam returns notes at the bottom of Google’s search results, saying the company has removed some links in response to a legal request.

“Google gets mad when it’s used against them,” Retkin said, referring to the notorious incident where CNET published copious information about Google CEO Eric Schmidt that writer Elinor Mills found using the search engine.

On Google’s US search pages , the same query for dotworlds scam returns over 300 results, referring to the postings that have Retkin and his legal advisors at odds with the company.

British Man Pushes Google On Defamation

If this case were in the US, where search engines and other websites generally can claim no responsibility over third party content, Retkin’s case probably wouldn’t make it out of a lawyer’s office. British law works a little differently.

A report in The Independent said that in Britain, the same legal protection is conditional. If a company does not have notice of a complaint and time to act upon it, they have some insulation from these claims.

Retkin has complained about online postings accusing him of running a fraudulent business appearing in Google’s search results. Though the report said Google claimed to have removed material and blacklisted links to it, a query for ‘Dotworlds registrar’ at press time turned up a mailing list post with those accusations as the top result.

Google’s response made the usual claim that the company is not responsible for the results of a query. "Google has absolutely no connection, control or ability to direct or influence the content of web pages which may be shown as links within any given set of search results," Google’s legal counsel Harjinder Obhi said in the report.

UPDATE: For commentary from Retkin, see our chat with him here.