Suing Google Over Pagerank 427
Yardboy wrote in to tell us about a story from Reuters describing a lawsuit by parental advice company Kinderstart.com against Google for 'charging it unfairly deprived the company of customers by downgrading its search-result ranking without reason or warning.' Kinderssart claims Google is responsible for 'a "cataclysmic" 70 percent fall in its audience -- and a resulting 80 percent decline in revenue.' I guess the courts will now decide: Can google taketh what they giveth?
Re:fp (Score:5, Insightful)
If they want to be shown they should pay for advertising. My lastname.com is on page 3 if I search for mylastname. So should I sue google? Maybe I should "advertise" since that is how they exist.
I hate bullshit like this, if you base your business model on a high google ranking you should do what others are to maintain it. Salma Hayek pics are hard to find since those site purveyors have the first 1000 links or so going to some scam *nude stars* sites. lol... maybe that is what i wanted after all
So which is it... (Score:5, Insightful)
"aggressively defends the secrecy of its patented search ranking system"
Is it patented or secret? I mean it can't be both.
Uh... Google can do whatever it wants... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:fp (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a bullshit suit. I'm sorry you don't have a constitutional right to have your message/voice broadcast/printed/served/displayed by others.
Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Furthermore, pagerank is explained here [iprcom.com] and here [google.com]. Finally, if 70% of their audience and 80% of their revenue SOLELY relies on Google, then they need to change the way they advertise their site and profit from it. Looking at their site, they look just like a plain directory of links; they probably make money from advertising.
My take on this (Score:2, Insightful)
And their argument is pretty damn lame, saying Google is "depriving their customers". Well, their customers already know about their company, and thus should easily be able to find them again. It would be potential customers that might lose it.
I think Google should countersue, claiming that Kinderstart's lack of using paid advertisements on Google has resulted in a depression of Google's stock prices. Or something equally outrageous.
It would be a sad day if Google is forced to open its pagerank system, as search results would be listed in order of the cleverness of a company to exploit their system, instead of actual relevence of the search.
Re:fp (Score:4, Insightful)
Give me a break (Score:5, Insightful)
The complaint accuses Google, as the dominant provider of Web searches, of violating KinderStart's constitutional right to free speech by blocking search engine results showing Web site content and other communications.
Google is a private company. It has no obligation to endorse Kinderstart's company than any others.
Like I have said before, the constituion gives you a right to freedom of speech, it does not guarentee you an audience. Saying Google should be forced to index Kinderstart *at all*, let alone that it should enfoce some ranking formula, would be akin to saying that a library should be forced to hold a certain book, or that a televsion station be forced to air a certain show.
Don't like the shows on a network? Change the channel. Don't like the results Google provides? Use another engine. It's not like they have a monopoly on web searching.
Re:fp (Score:3, Insightful)
If I say "I recommend these sites: " and then I remove one from my list, am I obliged to *explain* myself?
I am not, no more than anyone is obliged to listen to me.
In general, I think corporations *should* be answerable for the broader consequences of their business motivated decisions (even though, as a matter of law, they generally are not). However, in this case, that is absolute hogwash.
They should be free to make whatever recommendations they want. If they are good recommendations, people will tend to listen to them.
I am not concerned with the intrinsic rights of Google to do page rank however they want. I am concerned with the intrinsic rights of individuals to get whatever page rank google decides to give them - if they decide that what they want is google's page rank. They are not answerable to anyone about what information they choose to provide, or why - in the same way that the New York Times is not.
Re:Well, they are spammed with traffic now... (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyone else find it funny they're running Google Ads? THAT's why they're pissed off ... 80% decline in ad revenue from google.
Re:traffic (Score:2, Insightful)
Advertising-101 will tell you that heavy promotion merely compresses the timeframe for adoption and repeat business.
If the product stinks, it will flame out in under a year rather than die a slow product cycle death. They lost core visitors here.
Free services becoming core infrastructure (Score:3, Insightful)
1) Private company freely provides service
2) It is found useful by individuals and companies for finding one another
3) Its use becomes wide-spread and significant in the success of companies (maybe)
4) One particular company sues provider of this free service for not catering to them
Not that this is the first one to bite the hand that feeds.
Shoot Your Lawyer (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Uh... Google can do whatever it wants... (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree. If the courts say there must be a "fair" system to decide pagerank, then who decides? Do we want Google and Yahoo to return the same results?
If one of the search engines does not work, then don't use it. That's why I don't use google very often anymore. If I want to search for homes in an area, I don't get real estate offices in that area, I get too many pages of fake-mls pages that just want to advertise a different site. What good is it getting 1000 results, with the 10 or 20 good ones burried?
Googles pagerank algorithm does not work, I don't think any algorithm can work. It is too easy to manipulate. What we will need is a open source project, with people adding websites to an index. Maybe that will work, maybe it wont like Amazon where a few people can spam the scoring system.
Perhaps the real problem is the growth in the internet. Before google, even before yahoo, when I was using webcrawler, I would get very good search results. Most came from universities or private websites from people interested in their hobby or topic. Today, the best websites I find come by word of mouth, a friend saying check this out.
Re:Well, they are spammed with traffic now... (Score:5, Insightful)
It looks like one of those sites you get when you mispell the name of a website and you end up with some random search. If I hadn't gone there from slashdot, I would have quickly hit the back button for fear of spyware.
Re:fp (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Shoot Your Lawyer (Score:2, Insightful)
Human index isn't the solution (Score:4, Insightful)
That's definitely the solution. I can always find exactly what I'm looking for with Open Directory, but not with Google.
Give me a break. Maybe you just need to learn how to search? Or maybe you should click the little link at the bottom of your bad search results that says "Dissatisfied? Help us improve." You won't find that at Yahoo.
Re:Give me a break (Score:5, Insightful)
In principle, of course, you're absolutely right -- but the difference is that Microsoft broke the law (and mostly got away with it, grumblings on
Whether Google actually constitutes a search engine monopoly is an interesting question; given Yahoo's position as a pretty strong number two, I'm inclined to say not, but it might be worthy of a court test one of these days. I really doubt Kinderstart are going to be the ones to make this happen, though.
Google can't do whatever it wants (Score:2, Insightful)
Google is, as has already been mentioned, a public company. It does have certain fiduciary responsibilities to its shareholders, so the management can't for example, decide to shut down operations, abscond with the profits, and move to the Bahamas.
Beyond that, though, any company still has to operate within the law. Just ask Microsoft, which is grappling with EU law and has fought the US Justice Department and various US states over the years. Virtually any large company you can think of has been sued for running afoul of the law in some fashion, and will get sued again in the future.
Apple has been successfully sued over bad batteries. Yahoo was sued in France for allowing Nazi content. I'm sure we're all familiar with Tyco, Enron, and Worldcom.
Personally I think this suit against Google doesn't have much of a chance, because Google's behavior doesn't seem at all abusive or discriminatory. Frankly, I'd be suprised if it survives Google's summary judgment motion (which will surely be forthcoming).
That said, companies can't do whatever they want, even with data they have gathered on their own. They still have to live within the same laws as the rest of us. Ayn Rand wouldn't have liked it, but that's the way it is.
Try the 'in-your-shoes' test (Score:3, Insightful)
Imagine Microsoft says it has the definitive authoritative search engine, and then blocks Oracle from the results. Now when you search for anything related to databases you don't get Oracle, even searches directly related to do with Oracle databases.
Are you OK with that now?
Google owes Kinderstart *nothing*, other than a good authoritative search result, because thats what they've promised to deliver. So anytime they end up in court it will come down to this 'can it be argued to be fair'.
And you guys shouldn't argue that 'they're a private business and can do *anything* they want', because what will happen when its Microsoft attacking its competitors? What will you argue then? What about when its Microsoft browser blocking Google.com?? Still OK with that?
I agree Google will win this one, because if you search for kinderstart, they are in the listings, and kinderstart.com does bring up the page. But type in [kinderstart animal friends] which is right on their home page, and you get this:
http://carse.roxywatchsummer2002.info/ [roxywatchsummer2002.info]
Thats not good, Google do need to clean up things in this result set.
Re:mod parent up (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft = MONOPOLY
Google = _not_ a monopoly
These are two completely different situations. Microsoft has legal restrictions put upon it becuase of it's position in the market (a Monopoly). They are _forced_ by law to play nice with others, because they have so much power.
Google isn't in this position (yet!). There are still several _large_ competitors (Yahoo and MSN) and Google is no where near a monopoly. Because of this they don't have any legal restrictions... they can do as they like because natural market forces will keep them in check (if Kinderstart.com is something people want to find... and they can't get it on Google... they will move to Yahoo or MSN... thus depriving Google of a customer). If those natural market forces ever go away in the search sector (as in Yahoo and MSN completely tank) _then_ Google will have to play nice with others as they will have a monopoly on how people retrieve information on the web...
PLEASE quit comparing Google to Microsoft. Just because a lot of people around here use them _doens't_ mean they are a Monopoly....
Friedmud
Re:fp (Score:3, Insightful)
What does a private company owe someone who simply wants to be ranked high?
Um, Google is a public company.
However, public or private, Google isn't required to reveal their methods as those methods could qualify as a trade secret. If you try to haul Coke into court and demand they hand over their formulae, what do you think would happen? (besides the judge giggling, snickering, and laughing as though they are wearing feathered underwear under their black robe.
If they don't like the way they're ranked, they have several choices: (a) pound sand, (b) rely upon other search services, (c) take a timeout in the corner, (d) hire a spammed service which promises to put them in the top 100.[1] And in fact, this last item may be why they're acting like their tail is being twisted: they hired someone to rank it, it either failed or was short-liived, and the service they hired said it was Google's fault. I could accept option (d) without too much arm-twisting. "Hey, we did our part. Google screwed you over."
They're mad because they've got a Field of Dreams problem. Everyone thinks they have the next perpetual machine and they'll have to reinforce their doors because people will be knocking them down. No one shows up, no one cares, and after a good crying jag, they figure someone's going to pay for it. After all, they did their part correctly so someone else screwed up.
I've got some advice for them handed down many, many years ago: "No matter how good a product is, the market can be cruel & harsh." If they self-publish a book, are they going to sue the various chains because they won't put it on the shelves? And if the book manages to get onto the various shelves and it doesn't sell, are they going to sue the bookstores?
[1] I still snicker at the logic of placement spam: "Guaranteed to make your site ranked in the top 100 of the following search engines:..." Even if they manage to accomplish this, they don't tell you how long you'll remain there. Simply put: if 1'000 people respond to this ad for a single blast of spam (and the service is legitimate in its efforts), how can all of them be guaranteed top 100 placement? Then look at how many people are spamming this service. For some reason, this logic escapes many who believe themselves to be intelligent.
The bottom line? After the judge stops laughing, it should be dismissed via summary judgement, demand gorilla glue to be liberally applied to each person's head, then lodge it into their tucus.
First Amendment? (Score:3, Insightful)
They have the right to free speech. But here's the thing: Google is not a public forum. Google, as a seperate company, has every right to decide what they do and do not display on their webpage. Kinderstart has every right to go elsewhere and advertise their site. But last time I checked, regulating what privately-owned web pages display don't fall under the first amendment. Otherwise, you'd see a lawsuit every time a post gets deleted on (insert random popular web forum here) for breaking whatever that site's ToS is.
But, of course, it makes for better FUD when you slap a "You broke the first amendment!" sticker on companies.
On the plus side, at least Google's lawyers are getting a workout. Between the whole DoJ thing [slashdot.org], the FTC's demand for emails [slashdot.org], and that stupid Usenet lawsuit [slashdot.org], they're definately earning their pay.
Re:fp (Score:3, Insightful)
You are effectively saying that Google is better because it uses security by obscurity. I know lots of Slashdotters, especially supporters of FOSS, believe that relying on security by obscurity is silly and pointless. I'd just like to hear what those people think of how Google handles its own code.
The Lawsuit is Well-Grounded (Score:2, Insightful)
The point is that if you are one of a few major players profiting from a business that has become essential to the public, we'll let you enjoy your quasi-monopoly, but you'd better be available equally and evenhandedly to all. (That's easier than nationalizing such entities.) The day is coming when Google, and Microsoft too, will be regulated like public utilities. It is completely inevitable.
Kinderstart is a typical links-only page (Score:2, Insightful)
They seem to me to be a cybersquatter-esque colection of links, with no real content. Seems to me that Google did the world a favor by deprecating their listing.
My guess is that all of their revenue was from click-throughs. Google is doing the world a favor by not putting other directories on their first page. We go to Google to get content, not link-lists.
I predict that they will lose in court, if their page is entered as evidence.
Remember, Google is about providing relevant content, to their users (people who search), and click through to their advertisers. I'm not exactly sure how Kinderstart has any standing here, unless there is an implied contract, which I strongly doubt.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The Lawsuit is Well-Grounded (Score:3, Insightful)
Utilities are natural monopolies. Telecoms are natural monopolies. Windows represents a natural monopoly.
Google is not a natural monopoly. First, it is not a monopoly at all. Yahoo! and MSN will be pretty miffed at the notion that Google controls the market--sure they are the top dog, but they don't control it. Second, unlike the cases mentioned above, there is relatively free entry in the search engine market. Just ask Google. They entered search very late in the game, at a time when AltaVista dominated, and spent no money on marketing for the first several years. Despite that, they went from zilch to king. You can't say this about utilities because of the sort of infrastructure costs involved and because of the inefficiency of multiple water/gas/etc. companies serving the same area. And until there is a Windows clone (like AMD is an Intel clone) that can run Windows software, Windows is also a natural monopoly. If Google become evil incarnate, I can assure you that the market will correct the problem by handing someone else the crown faster than the government can say "Congressional committee". Just ask how the folks at Overture are doing these days...
Governments do NOT have *any* mandate to regulate monopolies on a whim. Their mandate extends to natural monopolies and to cases of abuse, such as anti-competitive behavior. Until that can be shown, there is no basis whatsoever.
Also, geeks tend to lean towards libertarianism; please do not mistake libertarian for Republican.