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Google bins white supremacist site after it tries to host-hop away from GoDaddy

Ad giant has legal fig leaf to justify ban

Google's become the latest company to let alt-right site The Daily Stormer know it's not welcome to register its domain.

GoDaddy yesterday gave the site 24 hours notice to move on after it published vile comments about Heather Heyer, the woman killed during protests in Charlottesville, Virginia.

A Google statement says the company cancelled the site's registration with Google Domains “for violating our terms of service.”

But it is unclear which terms the company is relying on. Google Domains' Domain Name Registration Agreement contain no provisions regarding hate speech, but do say the company can cancel a domain registration if registrants provide incorrect information or fail to pay.

Registrants have the option to use the WhoIS privacy service and the legalese for that service gives Google the right “to suspend or cancel your domain name and to reveal Registrant and Contact Whois Information in certain circumstances” among them “... activities that are: illegal, illicit, misleading, objectionable, harmful, hateful, defamatory, derogatory or bigoted based on racial, ethnic, sexual preference, age, disability or political grounds or that may otherwise cause injury, damage or harm of any kind to any person or entity.”

Last week Google fired an employee for penning a document alleging left-wing group-think dominates the company, attracting criticism from the right for saying it values diversity but would not tolerate the worker's opinions. Cancelling Daily Stormer's domain registration looks likely to revive such criticism, putting Google front and centre in the diversity debate again, albeit against opponents whose position on diversity is to insist there be none. ®

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