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Google Responds to SearchKing's Lawsuit
The Importance of writes "Back in October, SearchKing sued Google for reducing SearchKing's pagerank, as previously reported. Now, Google has filed a reply and a motion to dismiss. LawMeme has both documents as well as analysis."
I'd just remove them completely from the search enginge. Google is a private company and has the right to exclude anyone they choose.
to think they can win a case like this. these people are probably only doing this to get some free press (and it seems to be working). my advice to anyone would be; don't talk about it, don't write about it, and if you have to, don't mention there name.
Acts@core.mailboks.com Acrux@core.mailboks.com Adam@core.mailboks.com Adar@core.mailboks.com Ada@core.mailboks.com
Google has the right to enforce any formula they wish, including a modified one or even an outright fudged one. They're a private company. They can choose to link to whatever sites they wish. They also provide the courtesy of delisting sites that wish to remain anonymous.
Actually, Googles response is quite similar to this. They claim that page rank is an "opinion" and can't be proved true or false and is therefore free (protected) speech.
They reference a court decision where a school district's bond rating changed, causing financial difficulty to the district. The court ruled that the organization issuing the ranking had a right to change it based on it's own techniques or rationales.
If I were Google, I'd just delete them all together from the search database. Google is a PRIVATE CORPORATION and has the ability to include or exclude anyone they choose.
... Well I certainly hope that Search King wins. If my company decides to block Slashdot because I post too much at work, I'll be able to sue them!
There is an interesting quote in the article that says: "Perhaps a search engine is important enough to be treated as a regulated utility, the same way that water, gas, and the cables over which search requests travel are. Google is good, most netizens seem to think, but what if it weren't?" If it weren't good the principles of free enterprise would kick in a Google would no longer be important... One of the hundred other search engines would become king of the pile. Remember Google is the third or fourth search engine that has been THE search engine. This is not a monsterous company with Billions of Assets like Microsoft or Standard Oil etc. Google is a reasonably small company doing what they do, and doing it well.
The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed (SK)
Now, I might have this all wrong, but to me it seems that SearchKings way of increasing it's customer's page ranking is just another form of electronic spam. It exposes Google users to information they do not require and furthermore may obscure the *real* information they are looking for.
This is exactly the same behaviour I see with email-based spamming. Any of the spammers tried to sue the manufacturers of spam-filter software yet?
I asked for a refund - and got my monkey back.
Why is it a bad thing? Did SearchKing have a contract with Google that they broke? Was he paying them at all? Was there some implicit agreement that SearchKing would be able to use google for profit? As far as I'm concerned Google's page ranking algorithm is its own property and they're free to change it as they wish. And as long as google keeps returning good results for me I'll keep using them.
I have trouble with passwords among other things.
"This is the same as sueing the "A" group in highschool for not deeming you cool and because of that your self esteem suffered and you became a computer science major."
Now why didn't *I* think of that?
KFG
i disagree. the reason we like google (besides the simple interface and no pop-ups) is because it gives us relevant results. do you think that people who pay link farms to up their pagerank are the most relevant sites? i don't think so. so if the google people make the connection that searchking is bad, then it's up to them to lower searchking's pagerank. it up to google to decide what makes the most relevant results show up first, that's what keeps google the #1 search engine. if they screw up and the most relevant results are no longer the top results, then we'll find a new search engine.
Especially at the bottom of the page the paragraph that reads:
RIGHTS TO USE CONTENT OR REPRODUCE
This site and all information contained within it are the sole property of SearchKing, Inc. and may not be reprinted, republished or used in any way, in part or in it's entirety, without the express permission of SearchKing, Inc. Violation of these terms, especially taking remarks out of context to support your own opinions, will be dealt with all the severity allowed under the law.
SearchKing, Inc. believes that if I take a remark from their website and form or support my own opinions is somehow a serious violation of the law, and "will be dealt with all the severity allowed under the law". What law do they speak of I wonder? What law is there that will restrict me from reading their publicly available content, taking some remarks and forming opinions on them?
I thought I was impartial when I tried to access their site, but after reading this crap, I think they are bunch of morons.
Oops, this may land me in court now.
Let me try to understand this: some spammer is charging money from other spammers to exploit and devalue Google's search service, and annoy Google's users at the same time with irrelevant results. When Google takes appropriate action against this, the spammer sues?!
Yeah, right. Next, I'll be sued by spammers for deleting their junk mail without reading it, and depriving them from their principal source of income.
Granted, I'm not an expert on lawsuits, but this one seems more complicated than most people see it.
I don't think SearchKing is trying to get Google to undo the changes it made to its PageRank algorithm. I think SearchKing is trying to use the fact that Google changed its PageRank in order to get a massive settlement out of court.
The CEO of SearchKing is trying to force Google into a position where they will either have to give him a huge stack of cash or they will have to reveal more detailed secrets about the workings of PageRank in court. Google's entire business depends on PageRank remaining a trade secret. If I were Google, I'd fork over the cash if it looked like it might come down to that.
Did you read his post? He said "Not that that's a bad thing", meaning "That's a good thing".
You're arguing with him, yet you agree with him.
If I were Google, I'd just delete them all together from the search database. Google is a PRIVATE CORPORATION and has the ability to include or exclude anyone they choose.
While this is true, I think that Google isn't doing it because they realize that it would be detrimental to them.
Google is held in general high regard because it provides the best search engine. If you are looking for something, chances are Google will be your best shot at finding it easily.
The web sites hosted by searchking contain information that might be important to someone - and by deleting them from their DB, Google is lowering their own value to whoever might want to find that info.
The paragraph that got me rolling was:
"In these documents, you will find answers, (according to google), to questions like:
DID GOOGLE DO IT INTENTIONALLY?
CAN GOOGLE DO IT TO YOU?
WHAT CAN YOU DO IF THEY DO?
HOW IMPORTANT IS PAGE RANK TO PLACEMENT?
ARE THEY WORRIED ABOUT OTHER LAWSUITS?
You can learn answers to these questions and more ---- but not for free. It's going to cost you $20 to see the documents. The $20 for the password to view these papers is not a sale. It is a donation to the SearchKing legal fund. "
W * O * W
That's so stupid it's just simply impressive. I have this morbid curiosity to find out just how many people would spend $20 to read this moron's "insights." Me thinks I've learned more from my cats.
I don't know whether to laugh or cry!
Google is a site designed to be a resource for US. That is their mission. They don't give a flying fsck about providing a profit center to some other company--nor should it be considered their responsibility to support.
Gads.
The apocalypse must certainly be arriving Monday. Or, at least, I hope it is.
-buf
I went to altavista and type
+ozzy +osbourne -searchking
I am hurting their business.
I think some referee needs to be monitoring Google's movements so that they cannot making under-the-table changes to the formula while claiming their not.
We have no way of knowing that the new york times does not alter their reporting to suit their advertisers.
We have no way of knowing that slashdot's moderation system is not somehow keyed to a secret agenda. There is evidence that the editors strip people of the ability to moderate without ANY PUBLIC SCRUTINY WHATSOEVER! (Gasp!)
Consumer Reports could have a vendetta against General Electric and GE would be basically screwed. There is no government watchdog.
The point is - just because people listen to publcation X does NOT give anyone the authority to regulate what X can say, how, or why X can say it. If the editors of X want to be sleazy, it is their right. The decision as to what constitutes sleazy or improper behavior belongs to the editors of X. The law intrudes on this in only a few areas - the legal, medical and financial professions only, for the most part. These three areas have special features that do not apply to google.
I look at it this way: the people at google have developed a reputation for utility and authenticity, and a technology that backs that reputation (two seperate things.) These things together give them power.
You are proposing a major power-play; you are saying, they have all this power, but they should not be in exclusive control of that power. Someone should referee them to make sure they don't abuse it. This means - some of their power should be taken away and placed in the hands of the public sphere.
In the case of power derived primarily from material wealth it so happens I agree with you. Individuals who amass material wealth have far too much power in our society.
In the case of reputation or know-how, I disagree totally.
No governing agency should ever be able to go "people listen to you, so now we're going to start regulating what you say." Doing so not only impinges on the freedom of the party with a reputation, google in this case, but on the freedom of all those individuals who looked at google and were impressed with its quality.
Likewise, no governing agency should ever be able to say, "you have unique skills, so now we're going to regulate how you apply them."
In closing - the Editors of google are entitled to their freedom of conscience. Google belongs to them, the prestige and technology behind google are theirs and no-one should be able to co-opt their work for some other purpose.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
The obvious answer to this "larger question" is this: if Google becomes an arbitrary dictator, giving popular sites low rankings, they will quickly lose their dictatorship. Imagine if a search for "apache" gave apache.org a PageRank of 346. Google wouldn't last long.
But if Google gives SearchKing sites a low rank? Well, nobody seems to be complaining but SearchKing.Read this. From the linked article:
Someone out there in the world makes a living as a Web accessibility consultant???
I'll risk redundancy in order to educate you folks that want to turn the Internet into $$$ by invalidating everything it stands for. This is Lawrence Lessig's quote from this Alan Cox essay:
Google is a search engine. It is a good search engine. When it fails to work for you, there are other search engines that you can use. That someone is earning a living by bumping up search engine results combined with this lawsuit by an obviously clueless company makes me worry about the future of this wonderful network that was created in an environment without MBAs, script-kiddies, and lawyers (apologies to EFF and LL...no offense).
--K.
Sig: Bad people happen. Try to avoid being one of them.
> fraud: "intentional perversion of truth in
> order to induce another to part with something
> of value or to surrender a legal right"
By that definition, SearchKing in guilty of fraud by creating link farms to artificially increase their customers' apparent relevance - like salting a gold mine with a 12-bore or ballot stuffing.
You don't. This is called a "buisness secret". They could very well be letting people to pay for rank. However, they probably aren't, since people would have noticed. As far as regulating how they decide page rank, it's about as likely, and about as important, as regulating what you eat every day. Why the hell should Google have to do anything to support anyone elses buisness? Either your trust Google to have an objective pagerank (or at least biased in a way that aids your personal searches), or you don't, in which case you don't use or care about it.
You're saying that PageRank itself isn't an expression of opinion, but that it is an aid to expressing an opinion. Of course they're making human decisions about what's good or bad - that's the function of their algorithm. That's why they modified it. As the lawmeme article says, there's no way to 'objectively' determine where SearchKing should be - 8, 4, 2. All any search engine can be is an expression of opinion. "We reckon that if you're searching for a water lily then this is the 'best' site for you.
Alister
Plus, since when is exploiting loopholes protected by law ?!
- A law has a "hole" that allows one to avoid taxes;
- Company X is createad to sell this service for a profit;
- Congress fixes the law and closes the loophole;
- Company X feels its business model has been depreciated by the lawmakers and sues them.
Same works for say, software bugs that are exploited in a profitable way by other software makers. Can McAffee sue Microsoft because Windows 5000 (let's be realistic here) made even the notion of a virus unthinkable ?
If your intent as a search engine is to provide relevant results, you have to tweak your algorithm to remove the irrevelant ones. Since searchking is indeed irrevelant, it would be extremely susceptible to falling on its face for this. To be honest, I'm almost aghast that they had the gall to get mad about this.
IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS,
And everywhere the language went, it was a total loss...
This would make sence only if it was really impossible to find anything on the web without Google, which is obviously - WRONG. You can use a multitude of search engines, you can build your own search engine.
Your comparison of Google to phone companies falls on its ass simply because Google does not actually own any hard lines but the phone companies do. For you to start your own phone company you will need to put millions of kilometers of cable but for you to start your own search engine you only need some programming skills, a computer and internet access.
Google should never be regulated by government - it is not the essential service. In fact Google is already regulated by its users - if you stop using it - it will go away just like Excite did.
One more thing - why should anyone have rights to regulate a private company that does not have contractual obligations to anybody? Are you paying them to use them? Maybe you should, then ask for regulation.
You can't handle the truth.
Where fraud comes in is when false claims are used to deceive someone into buying a product. For example, if the claim on that soap was "Cures Athlete's Foot" and you have athlete's foot, but it doesn't really cure athlete's foot, you would have been defrauded because you relied on the stated claim as a material part of your purchasing decision. But harmless puffery like "Our results are better because of our patented PageRank(tm) algorithm!" are no more fraud than "perfect for all of your 2000 parts!" on this box of Lever 2000 soap. You use Google because it works better, not because of harmless puffery that makes no material difference in your decision to use it or not.
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
Google has consistently stated that it will not bow to industry pressure to include so-called "paid" placement in their normal search results. To do so would betray the trust which they have built among their users and undermine the principles upon which their business success is founded. SearchKing should realize that Google's TRUST among users and advertisers is their biggest asset and that they will fight to the end to preserve the principles and technologies upon which that trust is founded. However, if that is not enough to dissuade SearchKing, then I sincerely hope the courts will strike down this frivolous claim and consign them to the scrapheap of history. Experience has shown that the practice of payola, which is essentially what SearchKing is attempting to engage in, is ultimately self defeating because it undermines the pretense of authority that makes a search engine result, a music promotion, or any professional recommendation trustworthy.
The strength of Google's case here (as described in the analysis) is also good news for DNS-based blacklists, such as SPEWS. While it seems obvious that publishing such a list should be protected on free speech grounds, it is nice that such a close analogy is being tested.
Prime numbers are exactly what Alan Greenspan says they are -S. Minsky
The entire merit of the case seems to be that searchking could lose business because they are unfavored by google, someone who's a hell of a lot better at doing what they do than searchking is. This kinda makes me want to sue all the popular kids in high school who disliked me and thus made others dislike me as well...
Oh well, I read Google's filed motions, they do a pretty good job of troucing every single one of searchking's complaints. They basically did everything but actually call Bob Massa a raging idiot (which would be amusing in court documents). This case shouldn't even have had the paper wasted to print up the memorandums.