Genius, a leading song lyrics site, has accused Google of copying its content and displaying it in search results. The Wall Street Journal published a report over the weekend containing evidence that supports these claims.
Genius’s complaints against Google date back several years. The tech giant was first alerted in 2017 when transcriptions seemingly copied from Genius appeared in search results. In April, Genius sent another letter to Google before contacting the Wall Street Journal.
Details provided to the Wall Street Journal showed how Google was allegedly caught “red-handed”:
“Starting around 2016, Genius said, the company made a subtle change to some of the songs on its website by alternating the lyrics’ apostrophes between straight and curly single-quote marks in exactly the same sequence for every song. When the two types of apostrophes were converted to the dots and dashes used in Morse code, they spelled out the words ‘Red Handed.’”
Genius found that lyrics containing its unique apostrophe pattern also appeared in Google’s search results, which the Wall Street Journal verified:
“The Journal randomly chose three of the more than 100 examples Genius says it found of songs on Google containing these watermarks, and verified the pattern of apostrophes was the same.”
Google denies knowingly copying lyrics from Genius and claims it is investigating the issue.
Regardless of whether the accusations from Genius are valid, pursuing a legal battle would be difficult since Genius does not own the copyright to the lyrics it features.
At the very least, Genius is bringing to attention an issue that affects many publishers online. It’s a growing complaint that Google’s rich snippets and information boxes divert traffic away from original publishers. A high-profile publication like the Wall Street Journal reporting on this issue is likely to draw more attention to it.
It is expected that more developments will follow once Google concludes its investigations.
