Falsely accusing somebody of a criminal act is defamation per se in the US.
I'm unsure if a US court would agree that search results would constitute defamation as well, but it certainly seems possible, especially if the search query was entirely neutral (i.e. just looking up this victim's name).
“Restoring a link to content Google had indexed which called someone a pedophile” is a lot different than the content itself and was just fined $500k. That’s a lot of liability for a link. That means any time someone asks for content to be taken down there’s a lot of risk in saying No.
The censors will win. The reputation management firms hired by billionaires will win. They will silence criticism, even true criticism. Even, especially, when they are in fact pedophiles, they will win a fight with Google, demand the Google AI take down all content that suggests they are anything but saints.
This world is coming. It may be here within a decade or two. HN used to be a place where people thought this was a bad thing.
I'm unsure if a US court would agree that search results would constitute defamation as well, but it certainly seems possible, especially if the search query was entirely neutral (i.e. just looking up this victim's name).