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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
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.
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.
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.
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
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