A court in Hong Kong has ruled that tycoon Albert Yeung, head of the Emperor Group, can sue web search giant Google for defamation because an autocomplete in searches for his name suggests adding the word "triad", the territory's notorious organised crime gangs.

When searching in English for Albert Yeung Sau-shing, the founder and chairman of Emperor Group, which owns property, jewellery firms and film companies, the searches automatically suggest “triad” as the second option.

In Chinese, the autocomplete function also offers "Sun Yee On" and "14K," which are the names of prominent triad gangs.

Mr Yeung wants Google to be made to remove the “defamatory” suggestions and to pay him compensation.

Hong Kong's high court has dismissed the search giant's argument that it did not bear responsibility for suggestions in the autocomplete function related to Yeung and that the court did not have personal jurisdiction over the US search giant, the South China Morning Post newspaper reported.

“There is a good, arguable case that Google Inc is the publisher of the words and liable for their publication,” said Marlene Ng, the deputy high court judge, in her ruling.

“The advantages of having easy access to a rich store of information [come] at a price; any risk of misinformation can spread easily as users forage in the web . . . The art is to find the comfortable equilibrium in between,” Ng said.

Google argued that autocomplete works according to an automated algorithm and the company is not responsible for the resulting suggestions, which change depending on what a critical mass of users search for.

Meanwhile, Google’s lawyer, Gerard McCoy, warned that “the entire basis of the internet will be compromised” if search engines were required to “audit” what could be accessed by internet users.

This is a regular problem for Google. In May the European Union’s highest court in matters of EU law, the European Court of Justice, ruled that people have a right to request that years-old personal information that is no longer relevant be removed from internet search results, the so-called “right to be forgotten”.

Mr Yeung is one of Hong Kong’s richest businesspeople.

In 1981 he spent nine months in prison after he was found guilty of obstructing justice in a personal injury case, and he survived a kidnapping attempt in 1989.

In 1994 he was picked up by the organised crime and triad bureau but was acquitted.