Thank you.

Correct. I think it's robust in some areas and I think, if I may, if you look back at the technology developments for the last hundred years, this has been a very common theme; it's not just relevant to the Internet. But a lot of my work and ...

That's right.

Yes, I think it -- I would say a couple of things. Firstly, the Internet is very well regulated in two ways. There is regulation, and we've been discussing what future regulation might look like, and that is really embodied by principles around the E-commerce Directive. The European Commission's ...

Presentation --

I think I would give the same answer that I gave before, that -- and as Daphne gave around Google Images, which is again we're the technical intermediary, we're the hosting provider. We're not ourselves publishing that content, and I think under the E-commerce Directive and the judgment ...

Correct.

Correct.

Again it's a very interesting question. I think there are two essential parts to this. Firstly, there is a very clear set of regulations which apply to technical intermediaries hosting platforms. It's called the E-commerce Directive and it does place a number of responsibilities on us around removal ...

-- I want to give you the right answer.

Yes, I think --

I don't want to give you the wrong answer. I will check and then come back to the Inquiry afterwards.

Yes.

Yes.

No, we don't.

It still appears.

I will come to Daphne's world in a second, but as you said at the end, what we're trying to do is to provide information that is the most relevant to the query that you've made, and again I want to emphasise, not to you, but to ...

Absolutely right. But just to re-emphasise, we absolutely do not take payment for rankings in Google News, just as we don't take payment for rankings in other parts of that natural Web Search result.

Absolutely not. That's absolutely not what we do. Also, if I may just pick up on what word you used -- sorry, two words, "remote editor", it's really important to emphasise this isn't editor in the sense of many of the people who have given evidence in the ...

Not --

It's a more refined search, but it's essentially part of Google Search, absolutely.

It's part of Search.

Okay, I'll attempt not to be overtechnical.

For instance, if I wanted to find out news about this Inquiry, I would -- I could either go to the Google Search home page, put in "Leveson Inquiry". Within those page of search results, some of them would be news search results ...

If I can, I think in summary, as your recommendations apply to services like our own, of course we'll take a very close interest and I'm sure we'll -- if you ask us for our advice, then we would very happily provide it, sir.

It sounds very provisional, but --

It's a very interesting question, sir. The first principle, as Daphne has rightly set out, is that ultimately the person that publishes that content to the Internet is ultimately responsible for the content that they've published. I think that's the first principle. But it's a very ...

Yes.

-- in summary, as Daphne said, again I don't want to speculate on something that hasn't been fully developed, but as Daphne said at the start, we prefer for removing results from our search index, it's much better for users if those judgments have been made by essentially ...

I think as --

As we said in our submission, we comply with UK law in this country. As I said, I would want to look at the process in some detail and give you a really full answer.

It is an incredibly interesting question. I think it gets to the nub of what the Inquiry is looking at. I don't want to get into the sort of position of speculating about what the regulation might look like, or whether it's backed by law or not.

I ...

Thank you.

I would have to -- I mean, I actually work with a team that commits significant investment to a large amount of very long-term academic debate in all areas of Internet regulation, internal policy. I would -- rather than give you an answer that is incorrect now, I would want to go ...

I can speak to a couple of examples. In the UK recently, we ran a very expensive, widely publicised campaign called "Good to know", and this was a very simple set of tools for people to remain safe online, through whether it's privacy protection or securing their email accounts ...

I'm not aware of one.

Well, to go back to one of the core elements of the audit report was the construction of the privacy working group, and absolutely that was -- the privacy working group was very much part of the privacy policy change that we announced this week, which of course is part of ...

Yes, we did, and it's important to emphasise that we profoundly regretted that incident. As soon as we discovered the incident, we announced it very, very publicly and we immediately contacted the ICO in the UK but also data protection authorities around Europe and around the rest of the ...

The forthcoming privacy policy, that will be announced this week. We talked to the ICO beforehand, we talked to many data protection authorities around the world, plus also privacy advocates, activists, beforehand. But it's important to emphasise not just because of this privacy policy change. We have an ongoing ...

-- but their view would be very different now.

I think it's right to say that Google has always taken privacy very, very seriously, it's not just taken privacy seriously from a very strict legal compliance position, it's taken privacy seriously because ultimately the trust that we have ...

Absolutely. If I can refer to the BBC News article that you mentioned, I think if you spoke to Privacy International now, their view of Google and privacy would be very, very different to the view that they had then. I would also not have agreed with their position then ...

It's -- I think I'll answer in two ways, if I may. It's not representative of -- the headline is not representative of the point that Eric Schmidt, now our chairman, was making. The obvious point that he was making was if you share information online, you are sharing ...

I've come from Victoria in London.

Yes. I've worked at Google for five and a half years. I advised the company on predominantly public policy issues and before that I've spent between 10, 11 years in public policy and communications.

For Europe, Middle East and Africa, yes.

David John Collins.