Maybe this points to a larger problem - the primary way to navigate the web today is centralized search engines. So much so that when you disable the address bar search features in browsers, people stumble quickly. While search results aren't speech, they are how people get to speech.
While search results aren't speech, they are how people get to speech.
At least in the USA -
You aren't guaranteed a platform for your speech, and you aren't guaranteed other people will listen to you. All you are guaranteed is that the government won't persecute you for saying it.
So a private company that does not promote your speech, is not a violation of the 1st Amendment.
Absolutely. It's a real problem and if I were in a country where search results are censored (by the government) or restricted (by the search vendor) I would certainly be doing whatever I could to find a way around that. This is unfortunate because now all the legal risk falls on me (eg if I am caught using Tor or somesuch) and a search engine operator is much better able to bear the legal risk and uncertainty than individual citizens of a repressive country or region.
On the other hand, I don't think the search firm is obliged to put itself or its employees in legal or political harm's way by exporting their home country's standards of free speech. Even in the US, I see Google is regularly blamed for providing results that are deemed racist or offensive even when those results are skewed by the behavior of users, deliberate or otherwise.
