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Google Sued over Page Ranking
OrangeHairMan writes "Google.com is being sued by SearchKing.com because Google "purposefully devalued his companies' and his customers' web sites, causing his business to suffer financially." There's a page on SearchKing.com's site too." Does anyone besides me find this hilarious? My favorite part is that the name of the site is "Search King".
Name says it all. It is owned by google..
They expect google to never change it? In return for what? Do they have ANY business relationship with google, other than the obviously parasitic one?!?
FOAD..
The law is a weapon of the government, not a protection for the likes of you. Surely you understand that.
How stupid do you have to be to think you have a chance suing google over improving their technology?
Oh, wait, this is the same company that sold placement on a site they didnt have any rights to..I think I just answered my question
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
So, is this a pay search engine, or are people paying him to rank their sites higher? If so, then everyone else with a web page should sue search king for "purposefully devaluing" their sites.
"Da ist ein Technölüst in mein Unterpanten!"
1) Make sure Google is faced with the possibility that it might have to reveal the details of its page ranking algorithm in open court. Might make for a quick settlement.
2) Quick publicity for Search King! They consider themselves a publicity company, after all.
Makes perfect sense to me, especially if you can get an attorney willing to take the gamble. Given the current glut of attorneys, this wouldn't seem to be much of an obstacle.
Roving Web-Teleoperated Robot
Gads, I went through this on K5 on a regular basis - I got sick of the meta-discussion about 'bias' and stopped visiting. Suddenly /.'s policy of only reporting news and not accepting stories about Slashdot itself look nice.
--
Evan "flashbacks with sound suck even more..."
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
considering that oe of the biggest reasons google got started in the first place was to honestly rank pages - i.e. in a way that wasn't influence by tricks like paid page rank or misleading meta-tage - it shouldn't surprise anyone (including searchking) that a parasite who's trying to trick the ranking system would intentionally get a lowered ranking...
... ... PANDIA. PANDIA GUEST WRITER. PageRank For Sale. Exclusive interview with SearchKing ... SearchKing and the PR Ad Network. ...
The second link on the google search for searchking says it all "PageRank For Sale -- Exclusive interview with SearchKing / PR Ad
/ PR Ad Network's Robert Massa.
Description: SearchKing has started selling text ads on its network of independent portals, with prices based on..."
Geez. If I really wanted to just go to the site that paid the most in advertising I'd stick with watching TV so I could just get my info from commercials. We all know how honest and accurate THAT system is.
SearchKing doesn't have a point anyway, unless there's a contract between the two obligating Google to do something to benefit Searchking (in exchange for Searchking benefitting Google in return). If SearchKing doesn't have a contract, Google doesn't have an obligation, therefore SearchKing doesn't have a basis to file a suit (and the suit should get tossed relatively quickly).
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
Is this a subtle troll or just rubbish?
Google has viewers because it has integrity and quality. If it abuses its position, it first loses integrity and quality and then loses viewers. No government intervention needed.
This isn't comparable with monopoly cases, hell, this isn't even a market liquidity case (i.e. Ebay is dominant because it is dominant, it doesn't pay to auction elsewhere because everybody auctions at Ebay...). Anybody clever enough can set up a server farm and get viewers if they have a Google beating engine quality.
On the legal side, this might be an unfair competition case but its difficult for a competitor (A) to claim that a company's (B) actions within B's business are unfair as they stop A's manipulation of B's business... You have to have clean hands as well to succeed with unfair competition claims.
From the SearchKing (can anyone say that with a straight face?) press release regarding the suit (bold font added):
/.'d.. I think that's about my daily recommended dose of irony for the day...
Bob Massa, president of SearchKing., Inc. and PR Ad Network, filed a lawsuit today against Google on the grounds the organization arbitrarily and purposefully devalued his companies' and his customers' web sites, causing his business to suffer financially. Massa is asking that the court grant preliminary and permanent injunctions against Google.
from dictionary.com:
arbitrary - Determined by chance, whim, or impulse, and not by necessity, reason, or principle
purposeful - Having a purpose; intentional
From what I can tell, it's pretty tough to do something arbitrarily and purposefully.
I wanted to go back and read more of the page.. but it seems that this web hosting site has been
Not that I think PageKing has any ground to stand on, but I do think that it would be great if there was some sort of court certification that Google's ranking mechanism is in fact unbiased as it is claimed by their Marketing and PR. That is, that there isn't code like:
If domain is 'pageking' Then
PageRank = 0
End If
Truth in advertising is a good thing. Now, for those claiming government intervention is bad (or that it is Google's algorithem and they can do with it as they please) there are two facts: (a) Google claims that it is a unbiased algorithem, (b) People depend upon this claim when using the service. Thus, while Google is free to change their algoirhtem, they should be constrained to do so in accordance with what they have advertised. Just like when I order a product I expect it to operate as advertised.
So, I'm hopeful that the court case goes forward and that it can set a precident that on-line services can be challenged if someone thinks that it operates with a different spirit than as advertised. That said, I also hope the Judge awards Google appropriate attorney fees after Google wins.
not that I htink P
Holy shit. Mr. King is even stupider than I originally thought. I'll let him speak for himself.
It's called robots.txt. Learn it. Use it.
Oh, so now you want to destroy search engines themselves. Except for yours. Yeah... um... riiiiiight...
So not even your link spamming buddies are willing to support you. You know you've got it bad when even the pr0n sites and casinos that googlebomb look down on you.
But I also think we should be more aware of who the Google Guys realy are: agressive advertising dealers, who may think are the only guys arround entitle to put a price to who important our sites are, with the power to ban your site.
What nonsense. They have no power at all to ban your site. You have an absolute right to put whatever you like on your website, and they have an absolute right (within the limits of the law, of course) to put whatever they want on theirs. If you don't like how Google works, use another search engine.
Why not try searchking.com, for example? Bwahahahahahah.
Bull. This is not about "companys who dare to sell what Google may only Google has the right to do: put you on top of the result search" or google trying to squash competition.
What this is about is someone taking advantage of the google system and google doing an error correction. Google is of use because it works as a ranking engine, and these people are intentionally trying to throw off the rankings.
This isn't trying to stomp on people, it is manually tweeking an algorythm. And it is a GOOD thing.
7. What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.