Sigh, this is related to the Pirate Bay trial. The pirate bay does more than providing "search" for torrents.
They provide hosting for the torrent files and also they are running trackers for the torrent files. The torrent network is backed by these trackers, this is a key difference between Google and them.
Also, illegal content is (I presume) a large part of thepiratebay's searchable content, while it's a very small part of Googles searchable content. Legaly I believe that makes a big difference.
Right, torrentz.com has been around for a while they provide the search, and aggregate all the trackers found for the same torrent across different sites. However they don't host the trackers nor do they store any torrent files.
Torrent files in themselves are not illegal. They are simply pointers, its the trackers that are at fault. Trackers facilitate the ability to download illegal content, where torrents and a search engine don't in themselves, they just link to trackers.
On the same note... Go google :) I just find it funny.
Just to shed some light, this is a Google Custom Search (http://www.google.com/coop/cse/) tool someone's set up. As previously stated it's fairly redundant in the presence of TPB and other trackers as it doesn't actually track torrents.
Like a torrent, a search engine tells you where to find the information you're looking for. I think its a bit of a stretch, but I'm guessing thats the general idea
The idea is that The Pirate Bay merely points its users to where certain information can be found.
A torrent file is basically just a list of pieces, consisting of hashes and filenames and other very basic metadata that is in no way whatsoever copyrightable, and a tracker is just a thing that tells you who to contact to grab those pieces.
The only difference here is that Google sends this all at once in a static HTML file -- a big list of things related to your search, which almost always includes copyrighted content; and Google is worse than TPB, because Google keeps significant copies of copyrighted material server-side, whereas TPB and other torrent sites as a rule keep none.
I'm all for copyright reform, but I have a hard time seeing the side of the pro-TPB folks. Hosting torrents is one thing, but you don't have to look any further from the name to see their position on piracy. I love free movies as much as the next guy, and I'm certainly not innocent, but I do believe that content cheaters are entitled to compensation. It seems like this case is 10% genuine concern for the precedent it might be setting and 90% cognitive dissidence by self-entitled pirates.
They aren't actually tracking these torrents though, unlike TPB. I can see where people are attempting to make the parallel (and why), but it really falls flat when you consider that Google is only being used to search for torrents, not store them.
It's possible that Google IS illegal according to that poorly worded Swedish law. But so what? It's not unconstitutional and I doubt anyone will care unless they actually did start going after legit sites.
They provide hosting for the torrent files and also they are running trackers for the torrent files. The torrent network is backed by these trackers, this is a key difference between Google and them.