In a post on the search engine’s Italian blog, Marco Pancino, European Policy Counsel for Google said the company felt obliged to make some clarifications regarding claims that Google is no different to the The Pirate Bay.

Pancino says (translated by Google) that Google’s job is to index and make all information online available, regardless of the formats in which these files are placed online, adding that, “The file formats are not in themselves illegal, but the use to which it is put to them as such.”

He goes on to compare Google and its users to a highway and the drivers that use it. “For example Google is like a highway on which cars are moving. Google can not be held responsible if one of these cars is a crime committed, nor is the car itself.”

Throughout the Pirate Bay trial, which ended last week in a guilty verdict, the defendants posed on multiple occasions that Google could be used to find illegal torrent files – not just the Pirate Bay. “Bit torrent technology can be used for both legal and illegal means on Pirate Bay in the same way as by Google or MySpace,” said defense lawyer Jonas Nilsson on the closing day of the trial.

The prosecution, and subsequently the judge, didn’t buy the argument and found the Pirate Bay guilty for its crimes against the entertainment industry. However, tons of people still believe that if TPB is guilty, then so too is Google for offering users the a product capable of serving the same function as the Pirate Bay.