Many people believe that there is nothing wrong with anticompetitive practices, all that 'might makes right' and 'free market' stuff.

It is also one of the sad parts of our legal system that on the one end people tend to lack the resources to fight, and on the other, wealthy people (and groups) can swamp the government and essentially have too much money for the state to fight them. That so much in our legal system depends on how much cash you have and how much justice you can afford is one of its great failings. Or great successes if you ask the libertarians.

Prosecuting something like this involves hiring more people and paying 3rd parties for various services related to the action. Basicly, they lack the manpower to fight something like this. They are already doing their jobs, which means they can not easily do extra jobs in addition to it.

You are thinking like a consumer, not a business owner. For consumers, sure they get worse results and can go elsewhere, but for business owners, the majority of their potential customers are going to use Google since it is the go-to for most people, thus it decreases your visibility and income. So it is a pretty big issue for people trying to reach an audience, which includes people who work for any company that has customers. Thus unless you're independently wealthy or work for a Google affiliated company, this probably affects you.

Depends on the region. Cities with large poor populations this is true, but in rural or affluent areas it can be disturbingly easy to keep someone like that, some places will even stick to the 'better safe then sorry' route and make the process really easy, esp when the subject is a minor.

It does seem like a rather bone headed way to handle such a situation, doesn't it?

Then again, that would be consistent. This feature is designed to appeal to parents and such, not suicidal people. Both suicide and self injury have a long history of being handled the opposite of how they should be since in both cases the focus tends to be on how it affects the people around them, people who do not understand what is going on and want to feel like they are doing something.

I had a similar worry, though I could picture it more as an alternative to swatting, a way to harass (or beat at multiplayer games) people as opposed to extortion.

Unfortunately, escrow sites like this are one of the proposed solutions to other issues involved with anonymous trades. So there is a bit of a rock and hard place here.

That tends to be the problem with pure free market corrections. What is good for the market and what is good for individuals in advantageous positions often to not align, with aggregate self interest often running contrary to what is good for almost everyone.

If the government was not fighting drugs, sites like this would probably just change which black market commodities they were involved with. That is not to say I agree with prohibition, but I think in this case it would not matter one way or the other since it was the profit motive of illegal trades that drew people in.

If this goes on much longer, this lawsuit will have a longer lifespan than Duke Nukem's development hell.

SCO, taking the idea of vaporware to a whole new level.

The problems involved here are not really within the range of 'fans' to solve, no matter how many you throw at it or how included they are.

What would be nice is if media was more critical of such scams. It kinda seems like when their core audience is excited about something they avoid questioning it.

I am also thinking back to that scam artist who got a bunch of media attention for 'finding' flight MH370 a while back by using magic xray film. Got time on CNN and everything, even though even basic journalism should have led them to ignore the guy. I have yet to see media outlets going over how wrong he was, they just sorta dropped it and pretended they were never supportive of him. I suspect a similiar thing goes on with stuff like Mars One, they either say something nice or nothing at all.

Yeah, calling it 'dangerously' flawed is a bit much. 'pathetically' flawed might be closer. Outside some bank accounts and embarrassment, this will probably not injure anyone.

Ever notice that 'uncertainty' seems to always be something that someone else is responsible for?