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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.
Previous LawMeme Coverage here, including a nasty reply from the SearchKing himself.
Google didn't reduce SearchKing's page rank, Google changed the page rank formula.
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.
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
Who goes to a search engine to search for other search engines anyway? That's like me training a dog to find other dogs that are trained to find dogs. I don't see how search king could possibly even claim to have a case here.
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
SearchKing is a 'service' that says they will improve your score on search engines like Google. They do this by trying to exploit the algorithms of engines like the Google PageRank system. So Google updated their algorithm to prevent the abuse.
Can I start up "Slashdot King"?
This SearchKing fool actually claimed monetary damages. What a dumbass, if I've ever seen one!
[sig]www.masterslate.org[/sig]
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.
Not only is SearchKing suing google, they are also selling (oh, sorry, they call it "making a donation") the legal documents. In order to get into the password protected site, you have to give them $20!
"Men lie."
"Yeah, about sleeping with other women, but never about bioluminescent plankton."
-Dan Brown
II. Table of Authorities
United States Statutes and Other Authority
Hustler Magazine v. Falwell
485 U.S. 46, 53 (1988)
Sweet! Larry Flynt will set me straight. So happily did I turn on to page 10, for those playing along at home.
and it read: which is totally not what I was looking for. I even checked under the staples.
SearchKing has a posting of Google's response, presumably with commentary. The link can be found here but you have to pay $20 to the "Legal Defense Fund" to view the entire documentation.
Fortunately, my curiousity is outweighed by me desire to NOT give SearchKing money.
"However," replied the universe, "The fact has not created in me A sense of obligation."
The King does have a point: when your "business" consists of shoplifting and the corner store installs a security camera, you're going to go out of business quickly enough that an injunction is your only hope.
"Jono Craig: One expected response from Google is that people should be careful what they pay for. They don't always get what they expect. That Google prefer algorithms to fight 'spam' but are happy to investigate claims of abuse manually if they need to. To me this would imply some form of intervention; both through public advice and possibly through filters or penalties to sites such as www.pradnetwork.com & www.searchking.com
Robert Massa: To me, it only illustrates the reason Google has become as successful as it has. They run a good search engine at least in part because they care enough to investigate. I'm not asking for or expecting any special consideration. "
So, he WAS all in favour of google doing what they like. Until it turned out to be something he didn't like. Uh huh.
People like searchking should be lined up and shot next to all the spammers.
[sig]www.masterslate.org[/sig]
... that must be because Google reduced SearchKing's pagerank, I think searchking should sue them.
... 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!
Helloooooo?!?!??!! McFly!!!!!
AC comments get piped to
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.
Searchking's Web Site has a page of News about their lawsuit and Searchking's Comments on Google's Response to the Court and their attempt to get the public to pay $20 for more details. I wasn't that impressed with it, but maybe you'd have a different opinion....
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Wait a minute aren't *they* suing Google?
It should be a "Legal Attack Fund".
We should sue them for false representation!
That's Just a Burglar Alarm -- Ignore It!
Well, pointed out in a previous article, Google has kept the exact method of its page rank for this as well as all other cases on the lowdown. However, if link farms were getting downgraded, I would wager that such things as Scientology would start to drop as well. Then again, I just did do a search for Scientology and noticed quite a few highly ranked sites critical of Scientology. You'll note that scientology.org ranks very highly, but I believe that a domain that nearly exactly matches a search ranks very high for non-common terms. For instance, try searching for "searchking recipes". They're #1. Now, try searching for "recipes". They're still there, but they're in the 80s.
Though, my ultimately answer is: I don't know. But judging by the catastrophic drop of their pages, I would wager they just manually set the PageRank for any SearchKing site to a low value, or capped it similarly. Further, depending on how you read the wording in their reply, you could assume they are implying that:
Granted, I'm sure any strict logicican (and certainly Google's lawyers), would suggest that this simply means Google has a right to lower anyone's Page Rank either directly or indirectly through modification of their ranking algorithms, and it doesn't even state that Google changed its algorithms at all, let alone specifically to affect SearchKing.
You like splinters in your crotch? -Jon Caldara
Another example was the Microsoft and "go to hell" incident which dissappeared from Google rather quickly once it became public.
Incidentally, searching for "SearchKing" on SearchKing doesn't even come up with SearchKing's front page, and the first result that is even close is number 7.
"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
Google's terms states a jurisdiction of California? Why didn't they not argue that?
And what about a counterclaim for fraud because they are ursuping the page ranking system and for adding pages for commercial purpose.
Fight Spammers!
Actually, it's pretty standard, as are most of the other moves mentioned by the reviewer, and which I read in the filings. No, I'm not a lawyer, but I've worked on lots of cases, including many tort cases, and that's my opinion.
That's Just a Burglar Alarm -- Ignore It!
SearchKing is circumventing the aim of google's page rank, by artificially inflating the value of their google rank.
They know partly how google's algorith works and they are abusing that. Google knows what they are doing and compensated for this.
It isn't just about crunching numbers and pushing the algorith about... the idea was to logically weight pages... not drop a lead brick on the scale.
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
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.
That's not exactly acurate. It would be more accurate to say that Microsoft knowingly corrupted Java while under license with Sun and as part of the relief Microsoft has to include Java.
I don't think this search deal is anything like the MS / Sun case. Except for the president of search king and Bill gates are both idiots.
Encryption: I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend your right to encrypt it...
He's defending his lawsuit with a speech about the evils of human meddling with the ordering of pages on a search engine to serve a goal!
It's not exactly censorship. Google created algorithms to rank pages based on several factors. They found that the algorithms were flawed and could be exploited by people like SearchKing. They fixed the algorithms. The fact that SearchKing or other link farms don't rank so highly anymore points more to effective changes to the algorithm than to censorship.
Until Google comes right out and says "We look for SearchKing specifically and downrank them!" It's not censorship nor is it wrong IMNSHO
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.
There is a law behind that. Google claims to present the unbiased results of its secret PageRank formula... if in fact they're presenting what the formula said plus the modifying decisions of their human editors, they're committing a basic fraud, promising one thing then doing another.
Well the reason Google is so important is that so many people use it, and the reason so many people use it instead of Yahoo or Altavista or Northernlights or Hotbot or LongDefunct.Com or Excite.com or Teoma or some of the other search engines out there is that they do a really excellent job. I used to use Altavista, who were not only the original big search engine, they were one of the best in terms of coverage, as opposed to Yahoo who had much better indexing but nowhere near as many pages. If you wanted to find something obscure, you'd use Altavista, but if you wanted to find something common, it might be hard because Altavista would get 50,000 references that you could look through 10 at a time. I switched to using Google because their search engine did a really good job of usually having the information I wanted in the first page or two, often in the first one or two references, as well as because their pages were lean and mean and not cluttered with dancing broken Javascript ads, and I've occasionally found the cache to be valuable for finding information that was once on the web but isn't any more.
As far as Daniel Brandt's rants about how the government ought to be regulating Google and PageRank because so many people use it, that's purely backwards. The government could accomplish any positive aspects of his goals by building their own search engines with their own page ranking algorithms, but if they go messing with Google, they're not only likely to censor some content and artificially inflate things they want to propagandize, but they're likely to make it less likely to have the material I want near the top, destroying the Pagerank in order to save it.
Some search engines have tried to make money by letting people pay for good placement - the pundits yell at them for it, and the public tends to use those engines less because they're better at finding advertising drivel than interesting content. Lots of web sites try to game the page ranking systems on all the major search engines, typically by including relevant keywords many many times in comments or meta-things, or by including them in small print at the bottom of the page, and the main reason the system doesn't get swamped by this is that the better algorithms try to detect this manipulation and neutralize it or seriously downrate for it. Otherwise the search engines would have a high proportion of uninteresting material near the top, mostly pages that are really just spam. If Google's PageRank didn't protect itself against whatever techniques SearchKing is using, he'd be doing the same thing, making it much easier to find pages people pay to promote than pages that are rated high because they're actually interesting. (I've got slightly mixed feelings about that, because his stuff seems to look less obnoxious than banner ads or dancing javascipts, and is usually on pages I don't ever read...)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
http://news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/google/skgoogle 101702cmp.pdf
e 101702pimot.pdf
http://news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/google/skgoogl
- what is the definition of simultanagnosia?! I've been meaning to look it up!
That's like trying a search for "preferences" and then "slashdot preferences". Yeah, I bet Slashdot would be #1.
I/O Error G-17: Aborting Installation
Exhibit "C"
:o
www://pradnetwork.com/rules.htm (website page)
'page can not be found'
www is not a registered protocol.
there goes the defence
Privacy is terrorism.
Well if they're defrauding you then why don't you ask for your money back?
Falwell sued and won a $200,000 judgment for emotional distress. However, the Supreme Court sent him home with nothing. A key factor was that Falwell is a "public figure," and so is more limited in damages he can recover. A rare 8-0 slam dunk on a controversial topic, this odd little case was considered a major victory for free speech and satire.
Anyway, a far cry from anything here. I can't see how this case would survive the motion to dismiss.
Google explains it as well:
http://www.google.com/technology/index.html
PageRank Explained
PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important."
Important, high-quality sites receive a higher PageRank, which Google remembers each time it conducts a search. Of course, important pages mean nothing to you if they don't match your query. So, Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines all aspects of the page's content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it's a good match for your query.
- what is the definition of simultanagnosia?! I've been meaning to look it up!
Look at this. Pay special attention to the part about speech.
Fair enough. I agree that google can cencor anything they want to, of course I'm glad they choose not to (except where required by law).
Google search for: web search gives the following ranks:
- google
- yahoo
- lycos
- altavista
- AlltheWeb.com
- msn search
- msn
- altavista (@digital.com)
- metacrawler
- webcrawler
and no searchking on the next TEN pages
am i missing something?
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
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
That's an important point. According to other posts, Google changed the formula to specifically downgrade SearchKing, if not other link farms as well.
That's got to be a major performance hit, since they'd have to add a check for a [list of] site[s!]. And when you're doing millions of searches daily, that adds up. Unless, of course, they've already got a hitlist that they check against. In that case, they'd already have a streamlined system to handle those checks.
They'd have to have some seriously advantageous result in mind if they're going to slow their searches any. (Granted, their searches have been so fast, I probably wouldn't notice.)
What's this Submit thingy do?
I went to altavista and type
+ozzy +osbourne -searchking
I am hurting their business.
But let's post the last paragraph on that page too:
"Integrity
Google's complex, automated methods make human tampering with our results extremely difficult. And though we do run relevant ads above and next to our results, Google does not sell placement within the results themselves (i.e., no one can buy a higher PageRank). A Google search is an easy, honest and objective way to find high-quality websites with information relevant to your search."
They claim that their formula is intentionally tamper-resistant, but is fair to all. SearchKing is claiming that PageRank contains something that downgrades any page that mentions them intentionally.
Sounds like the way to answer that question is to have somebody open up the black box and see what's inside...
Why not? It's a free country. Google is a private business. They have a right to their opinions, just like anybody else. Or are you saying that for some reason Google doesn't have the same right to call a scumbag a scumbag that I have? What rationale do you have for that statement?
Sounds to me like you don't like freedom of speech and freedom of opinion. That's a dangerous attitude, in my book.
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
Uh oh.. Now they're gonna sue you for taking away their right to a revenue stream! You must stop your anticompetitive behavior immediately and let them sell their public domain documents for $20.
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.In that case it seems pretty cut and dried, that Google decided that they felt that SearchKings's incestuous linking scheme, for want of a less accurate term, distorted said pages' relevance to a querie [SearchKing's whole scheme is based upon inflating page ranks by link manipulation, rather than some relevance-based criteria.]
Google tweaked PageRank, to take this attack against Google-users' relevance requirements, and SearchKing is whining it's whiny little arse off about it, to the man in the big chair, when they're obviously the ones in the wrong.
[SearchKing is an anagram of "gerkhin sac"]
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
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.
SearchKings manipulations of Google degraded Google's result integrity.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
> 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 too, YOU just reprinted, republished & used the part of SearchKing's page that contained the bit that says you can't do that. You didn't even post anonymously - boy are you in trouble now.
Except that it doesn't matter. Google making a false claim about their algorithm doesn't allow Search King to sue them. It could get them in trouble with some truth in advertising laws I guess, though...
Google can assign Search King a pagerank of -1 if they want. It's their OPINION and due to their location there's some obscure first amendment thing, which allows them to say it.
Even if google assigned Search King a pagerank of -1 because he once cut some high up google person off in traffic, they are allowed to.
Of course I'm stating my opinions as facts, but google's lawyer obviously has the same view, and even managed to find a *really* good precendent, which is so close it could be converted into this case with sed.
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
The SearchKing website looks no differen't than those web-portals for squatted urls. But they promise such good results! So here are some query response:
Search: "Fuck You"
-1. Get Paid To Surf The Internet!
-2. Where to find music CDs, DVDs, select MP3 music tracks, free music download
-3. Never Be Sued Again!
-4. Get Paid to Surf
-5. Kudos and Compliments for You and for Those Who Bring You Happiness
-6. (see 5)
-7. How To Start A Money Brokerage Business
and I think you get the point. Perhaps a more 'relevant' search query could yield better results:
Search: Car
-1. 765469
-2. License Plates - Vanity License Plates
-3. Next Honda of New England
-4. Ramsfield.com Auto Parts
Hmm. Better results than the search for "Fuck You". But I still wanna know the logic that went into making "765469" the number one result. Oh, and another nice feature is that the linked pages come complete with a SearchKing adbar in a differen't frame.
/There are 10 types of people in this world; those who steal sigs and those don't
Goggle does claim that PageRank is an expression of opinion and hence "free speech." It is one of the major claims of Goggle's motion to dismiss. You should RTFA.
I had copied Exhibit A from the PDF, and didn't pay attention to the URL I got from Acrobat
http://w.qooqle.com/technolouv/index. html
Anyway, this was qooqle's (not google's) response to my request
http://paradise.qooqle.com/404.html
"Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pron surfed weak and weary.
Over many a strange and spurious pronsite of 'hot XXX galore'.
While I clicked my fav'rite bookmark, suddenly there came a warning.
And my heart was filled with mourning, mourning for my dear amour.
"'Tis not possible", I muttered, "give me back my free hardcore!"
Quoth the server,
404
OCR wins again.
Maybe they can sue google for taking that away from them too.
No sig, sorry.
I strongly suspect it works something like this: Google knows the algorithm is vulnerable to linkfarms. It would very hard, if not impossible, to algorithmicly detect a linkfarm rather than a legitimtely widely linked site. Therefore, Google added the ability for them to manually specify known linkfarms and have them downgraded. So it is a specific attack against SearchKing in one sense, and a general one in another. On the other hand, I've seen your name an awful lot on this topic. Are you sure you aren't involved in this or other cases in some way? How about some disclosure here, buddy!
Amusingly, the first result for "big fucking waste of time and money" is titled "carreers" [sic]. And the sponsored link is E-Bay. I don't know what amuses me more.
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 ?
I find this lawsuit to be more than ridiculous. I find it disgusting.
/.'ers, I propose we take an active role in this
wretched little saga: I propose we write to EVERY SINGLE CLIENT
displayed on SearchKing's site and tell them that we despise the
SearchKing lawsuit against Google and that we will NOT visit, support,
recommend or in any way help them until they have moved to another
hosting service or convinced SearchKing to desist in their legal
efforts. The same treatment should be directed at SearchKing's
advertisers, even if one of them is, sadly, Penguin Computing.
/. had over half a million subscribers. I think
that should get their attention. Don't you?
To sue Google for acting in its best interest and with a view to retain its effectiveness and credibility is nothing short of despicable. Whether SearchKing did it because it truly believes it is right or because it seeks publicity is irrelevant. Its actions are illogical:
a) SearchKing has come to depend on Google (as it stated) because Google can be trusted.
b) Google can be trusted because its algorithms are pretty accurate.
c) SearchKing tried to interfere with those algorithms, seeking INACCURATE results from Google.
d) Google modified said algorithms to counterbalance the interference, seeking its much-valued accuracy.
e) SearchKing sues Google.
I've read the LawMeme analysis and SearchKing's opinions and all I see is another unscrupulous dotcom trying to discredit a very respectable service to serve its own needs, regardless of the damage it may cause. So, fellow
Last time I checked,
Cheers,
Morel
Which isn't much in such a case.
The "I feel lucky" button goes a long way to prove this.
Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1992-1951
"SearchKing - Building a Better Internet"
Hah! Only a market droid could believe that spamming search engines and paying for unmarked higher ranks (thus polluting accuracy) make the Internet a better place.
What is it about their name that make me think of Barney Gumble? Perhaps Google should consult the legal advice of Mr. Search - "Call Mr. Search, that's my name, that name again is Mr. Search"
Hmmmm, perhaps this Internet King can provide faster nudity....
They can do what ever they want as long as they don't break the criminal code, contractural responsabilities & labour 'n enviromental laws, etc.
Seeing as Google & Search King haven't signed a contracted then fuck em.
Really, lets be honest, frivilous law suit style standover tactics are becoming the norm in the IT industry, so maybe its about time the big American IT companies, particularly virtual web based ones like Google, relocate overseas to places where frivilous law suits are instantly thrown out.
To places where frivilous law suits are instantly rejected
The fact is Google's a private company. As such they can do what ever they want as long as they don't break the criminal code, contractural responsabilities & labour 'n enviromental laws, etc.
Seeing as Google & Search King haven't signed a contracted then fuck em.
Really, lets be honest, frivilous law suit style standover tactics are becoming the norm in the IT industry, so maybe its about time the big American IT companies, particularly virtual web based ones like Google, relocate overseas to places where frivilous law suits are instantly thrown out.
I'd like to take a few bytes to thank Google for doing things like this. At one point, some months ago, I was doing a search for some obscure points of naval history ("predreadnought") and most of the top 50 results (mid 30s) were all to a set of linked pages. These were all lists of keywords to sweeten your metatags with. And they all linked to each other.
It wasn't SearchKing, it was all related to some bozo promoting techniques for improving search results. He had a lot of good ideas, some of which were even ethical.
I fired off an email to Google and at some point those pages disappeared. SearchKing might just be the only ones who sued.
Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1992-1951
There's also Daniel Brandt, the Google-watch guy, who thinks that Google ought to be regulated
Google should be regulated because so many people use it? Well, before you regulate this why doesn't anyone regulate the OS landspace?
I hear there is an OS maker who owns 95% of the market, yet laughs at 'regulatory bodies' & stuffs their pockets with money. Fuck google, if there is anything that needs regulation, it's OS Makers and their monopolizing tactics.
Google Cache of SearchKing's Google Page
I don't suppose this violates SearchKing's Terms of Use?
I'm a 2000 man.
So if SearchKing wins and gets their previous Google status restored then everybody else has a precendent to do the same. So company A has a right to be before company B, company B before company C, and company C before company A ... ! Wait, this could get messy.
A "link farm" more than likely would be a large series of pages that link to each other. Like a very thick web right?
Lets just say a certain search engine decided to give a sort of diminishing returns for repeat links. In a nutshell, the PR would be based on the number of unique links that it pulled..for example..it would look at links from pages that did not have links to the other pages that also linked to that page. Kinda confusing sounding...
If Google made a change like this (why wouldn't they?) that would kill SearchKing. SearchKing does not have a leg to stand on. They were abusing a system that got fixed. They have no legal or moral basis.
Besides, if they wanted to, they could just remove these guy's from their listing. I can't belive the audactiy of these guys (fucking sueing for crying out loud) to begin with!
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...
SearchKing was trying to "fix" the results and infact was not trying to affect them in anyway.
Here's the deal: SearchKing found all the sites that ranked high on Google and sold ad space on those sites. For example, if I searched for sprockets Spacely's Sprockets might come up first. SK would then contact Spacely's and sell ads to other people. Because Spacely's is he #1 result for a search on sprockets the ad space is worth money. Google didn't like this so any company that sells ad space through SK gets demoted, which makes the ads SK wants to sell worthless.
Hollow words will burn and hollow men will burn.
NOTICE.
THIS IS NOT A SALE. YOU ARE MAKING A $20 DONATION TO SEARCHKING, INC. WITH THE UNDERSTANDING THAT THE MONEY IS TO BE USED TO PAY LEGAL EXPENSES IN A LAWSUIT WITH GOOGLE TECHNOLOGIES, INC.
IN EXCHANGE FOR YOUR $20 DONATION, WE WILL SEND YOU A PASSWORD THAT WILL ALLOW YOU ACCESS TO ALL AREAS OF THIS WEBSITE.
THIS IS NOT A SALE. THERE IS NO REFUND OR CHARGEBACKS. BY FILLING OUT THIS FORM AND TYPING IN YOUR NAME AS IT APPEARS ON YOUR CHECK OR CREDIT CARD, YOU ARE AGREEING THAT YOU UNDERSTAND THAT THIS NOT A SALE BUT RATHER A DONATION THAT IS TAX DEDUCTIBLE.
(emphasis mine)
Snickersnee3: Build your own 3-watt Luxeon Star headlamp from scratch
Well, if you really have a comercial intrest in a search term, why not buy an ad for that keyword? When I actualy want to buy something, I usualy click the ads that show up on google.
An even better analogy is the broadcast industry. There are regulations that say that a single company cannot own so many local affiliates so it reaches more than XX% of the total population.
Actualy, a lot of these restrictions were lifted or removed in 1996. And now we have the scorge of clearchannel and the like...
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I wonder if SearchKing's knight is Sir Searchalot. Hmmm...
Trolls lurk everywhere. Mod them down.
If you want to know how the folks at Google feel about Scientology, try a Google search for "goatse". No, really! Look at the suggested category...
:-)
Nice hack
Except the change that killed search king largley killed the 'google bomb'
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Ok, what I mean to say that neither altavista nor yahoo have gotten the idea. And somehow alltheweb, while far simpler than, say, altavista is just not as lightweight as google. Google has some links that I have no need of, and there is nothing else I would require on it's interface. Then how come even a fairly lightweight search engine has more links and widgets than google?
Not to mention the whole issue of property rights. The ranking (and the algorithm for producing it) is property of Google. It seems to me that you are saying that Google can't do with their property whatever they please. Feh. It is true that "your right to throw your fist stops at the tip of my nose", but Google didn't throw any fists -- they just changed some numbers displayed on their own web site, available only if you explicitly asked Google for those numbers. This makes them no different than any other publisher of information.
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
If the mythical "reasonable user" would have used and continued using Google even if he had known that an advertising claim was inflated via "puffery", we have over a hundred years of jurisprudence that says that there is no fraud claim here. Fraud is when someone tricks you into buying a product that you would not otherwise have bought. But nobody tricked you into using Google. You use Google because it works better, not because Google engaged in some harmless puffery about how they arrived at their better results.
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
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.
So answer the question: Would you have still used Google if you'd known that Google's page ranking was mostly objective, but wasn't ALWAYS objective?
If you answer "Well, yes, because it gives me better results", BINGO! No fraud. Google could tell you "Our results are produced by 5,000 hamsters madly churning their hamster wheels in the basement of the Lawrence Livermore Labs" and if that had no effect upon whether the mythical "reasonable person" would have bought their product or not, there's no fraud involved. Even though, as far as I know, no hamsters were harnessed to wheels for the production of Google :-).
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
IRC section 501(c)(3) technically has nothing to do with the deductibility of contributions. That is governed by section 170, which merely happens to cover almost, but not quite, exactly the same entities as sec. 501(c)(3).
It is conceivable, but just barely, that the "contribution" could be deductible for some other reason -- if it's just an ordinary and necessary business expense, and for some reason exempt from capitalization, say -- but not for most "contributors." I'm fairly certain it is a crime for SearchKing to falsely claim these contributions are deductible.
I Can't Believe It's A Law Firm, LLP does not necessarily endorse the contents of this message.
I'm a... for lack of a better term, professional computer guy. I have a client who had a gorgeous website designed by a local printer. Problem was the designer didn't like arial or any of the common fonts and every bit of text on the site was a gif without an alt tags. The site had no meta tags either. The typical "I'm a designer so I'll start designing websites" mentality (as opposed to the "I'm a computer guy so I'll design websites mentality").
The client asked me why her site didn't show up in any search engines. She had this outfit redo the site with real live text and eventually was able to find herself on web.
Some database driven sites have the computer guy designing website problem. The site is chalked full of usefull information but you have to fill out some form to query the database to get the info out, thereby locking Google etc. out. Imagine another search engine indexing Google.... they wouldn't find many useful terms since they can't perform a search and press the button. Granted there are ways around that but not any that a search engine would probably try. Search King should still crawl back under a rock.
G
If Google reduces Slashdot's PageRank from an 8 to a zero and keeps it there, I'll take down my Google Watch site.
Google's reply to SearchKing claims they have the right to do this to SearchKing -- or anyone else -- for no reason whatsover, because it's their opinion protected by the First Amendment. Are you listening Google? Rid yourself of a pesky critic and raise the IQ of the Web in one simple step!
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.
It's time again for the golden words:
Here, go read The Myths of Internet Legal "Experts"
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
Google works. Google is good. Their page ranking system quite effectively filters out junk. A lowly scamster like the Search King moron don't deserve all this attention he's getting and no doubt wanted.
Remember those wacky Scienos? A while back they tried to inflate search engine page ranks for 'official' sites, by fabricating thousands of nearly-identical fake 'personal homepages' for their members, with alike-sounding 'success stories'. These were hosted on a bunch of camouflaged Scientology domains like www.our-home.org and many others. The pages were stuffed with official links, and it was quite clear that the primary purpose was to trick Google and other search engines into pushing all anti-Scientology sites out of the first page of returned hits.
At first, they nearly succeeded. There was other mischief about. You may recall that Google for a while didn't cache Operation Clambake (www.clambake.org) due to legal action by Scieno lawyer scum. Anyway, now Clambake is ranked a solid #2 hit on "Scientology" searches, clearly evidence of intelligent filtering going on at Google, for which we should be thankful.
I dunno, I was looking at the kennel.
Free Java games for your phone: Tontie, Sokoban
You're right about Google not having been declared a monopoly. I don't think that by itself makes it "not" one. OTOH, monopolies are allowed to continue crushing competitors in the specific field they monopolize, so I don't see any (legal) problem with Google's behavior.
Google isn't a monopoly, dork-wit.
Ever hear of Altavista? They're still kicking around and serving a good 20% of the market. A lot of people use iwon.com (I've seen them in the logs), and they're powered by Inktomi. Inktomi is probably Google's next biggest competitor. FAST might be next also, FAST and Inktomi are pretty close to each other.
Also, there's talk that Yahoo will switch to Inktomi, and most of Google's dominance arises from the fact that Yahoo syndicates Google results.
Google isn't a monopoly, and it's only through syndication that over 50% of searchers use Google, but probably close to 50% of people that use Google don't realize they're using Google through syndication.
Like what I said? You might like my music
Search on Google for "Altavista"
The first result is altavista.com
Search on search.msn.com for "Linux"
The first result is "buy Linux software on Amazon." The second is "Alternatives to Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP" on Microsoft.com. Linux.org is down in the double digits.
Of course, we would expect someone's Internet search engine to reflect their preferences, so this is neither shocking nor bad. It would only be a problem if MS somehow tied IE to their search engine and their search engine only.
All's true that is mistrusted
A truly successful developer/designer would DONATE their time to making the www a better place for all.
... Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed...
SearchKing entered into contracts where they promised other people they could provide Google's good opinion of a web page. Then, Google refused to give SearchKing its good opinion (high pagerank). Now SearchKing is suing on the basis that Google interfered with SearchKing's right to make contracts with other people.
Yeah, right. SearchKing brought this on themselves. Their business is built on promising to manipulate and deceive Google into ranking certain pages high. The court is going to laugh these guys right out the door. SearchKing has no hope of getting this injunction, much less getting to trial.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
1. Where the fsck did I say anything about "bells and whistles"
2. Where pricesly did I say anyone was directly assisting the handicapped themselves?
What I really want to know is why a little sissy-ass-tutu-wearing bitch like yourself has the balls to call soemone an "idiot" when you obviously cannot even read.
It is put up or shut up time. What have YOU donated to make the web a better place?
Gee, only thousands of hours teaching newbies how to code HTML properly. Now I suppose I will spend a few more moments teaching another newbie.
Your webpage http://de7.hccs.edu/ben/ has several egregious errors on it which are extremely hostile towards disabled people. You have 5 hyperlinked images which have alt="". These occur directly after the words "Good Stuff" are written. A person using a screen reader will have absolutely no clue where those "good stuff" image links go to or what they entail. The proper accessible way is to use short descriptive alt texts on the image tag so that people using non-visual browsers will know what they are.
eg...
You have
Should be
Oh, you said SUCCESSFUL developer/designer. Never mind...
Coming from someone who cannot even write accessible webpages, what a joke.
... Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed...
- The paid staff of the American Red Cross Disaster Services
- Oncologists
- Special-education teachers
- Professional fire fighters and EMTs
I, for one, am grateful that these people chose these jobs, even if they get paid for them.I have seen hundreds of these "accessibility consultants" and they are nothign more than second rate developers using disabled people as a scapegoat for their own lack of ability.
... Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed...
And you know what, I have writing web pages for ~5 years, but that is not all. I also administer a Dead Rat server (for Apache/PHP/MySQL), maintain over 30 Winblows workstations and run a Multimedia Lab so excuse me I am not an expert in everything but my webpages are for the most part serviceable (at least they render).1) I NEVER claimed to be an accessiblity expert, I just pointed out the they are not the "low-lifes" (your words) here.
2) That link is a pissy little homepage that I knocked out in 5 minutes. I should have run Tidy on the page but for a stupid little PERSONAL home page but why bother when I have so much other work to do?
3) I think a person with a screen reader would go to google for good stuff before they came to my useless little webpage.
ROTFL! It seems it it you, my friend, that cannor READ! Show me me where I said that I was an accessibility expert. Show me where I said I was the uber-webpage designer.
You can't because I didn't. I will admit that I have not thought about accessibility as much as I should and I can start doing so from now on, but don't accuse me of being unfriendly to the blind.
I work for a community college and if I ever get an ADA request I can refer the student in question to the Counselors. If as student calls me on the phone, I will stay on the phone as long as they need me to be answering any and all of their question and they would get better, more personalized information than they ever could from my crappy little webpage...
A few meta-comments:
1) Sorry abuout the "idiot" remark. I posted first thing in the morning so I was a little harsher than I could have been.
2) What is up with the moderation here? Being labeled flamebait for calling someone an idiot is a little "Politically Correct".
3) I noticed that you were not hesitant in using some ad hominems (sp?) there. If calling you an "idiot" is flamebait the you calling me "a little sissy-ass-tutu-wearing bitch" is too...
A man who wants nothing is invincible
It seems that I was extremely specific in what I said. It seems you made inferences with no logic or reasoning behind them.
My point is that I have witnessed a great deal of so called "web accessibility consultants" who were nothing more than secodn rate developers using "accessibility" as an excuse for their lack of abilities.
How about documenting these claims? For my amusement, post some URLs that show you doing this noble work for the betterment of the web.
How about you popping into alt.html and CIWAH and finding out.
And you know what, I have writing web pages for ~5 years, but that is not all. I also administer a Dead Rat server (for Apache/PHP/MySQL), maintain over 30 Winblows workstations and run a Multimedia Lab so excuse me I am not an expert in everything but my webpages are for the most part serviceable (at least they render).
Great I developed and maintain the company website which generates 500,000 monthly uniques and 17 million page views. I am an expert in website development. I also maintain the company's network which includes several *nix based file servers,smtp servers, dns server, vxml system, and 40 local win 98 workstations among other things.
1) I NEVER claimed to be an accessiblity expert, I just pointed out the they are not the "low-lifes" (your words) here.
There is no such thing as an "accesibility expert" it is a self annoited title for certain people who discovered that their Lynx friendly webpages were also friendly towards screen readers. They are the scum of the webdevelopment world. The top developers build accessible websites without the fanfare and bravado and nobody could tell the difference. There are two parts, sensible logical layout and valid html. It is an area which does not require "accessibility consultants." What that area needs is more experienced developers showing the kids that sites can be made accessible with minimal effort. Bottom line is that this is not rocket science, it is simple HTML coding.
2) That link is a pissy little homepage that I knocked out in 5 minutes. I should have run Tidy on the page but for a stupid little PERSONAL home page but why bother when I have so much other work to do?
Why bother!!! Why bother putting it up at all if you do not make it usable by all? Then there is the sense of pride that a task was done properly. Tidy would not catch the error I pointed out, only experience would and rather than taking this as a personal attack, take it as a elarning experience and knowledge that you can pass on to others in order to help make the web a less hostile place for disabled people. There are a lot of things which I strongly disagree with in regards to 508 and the WAI, but there are also some aspects which assist and help any device accessing that website which I strongly urge all people who place websites on public servers to do.
You can't because I didn't. I will admit that I have not thought about accessibility as much as I should and I can start doing so from now on, but don't accuse me of being unfriendly to the blind.
Perhaps you should know who exactly you are speaking to before you start slinging shit at them. You do not know me and if you had something to say about my comment of "accessibility experts being low-lifes," you should have asked for further clarification rather than attacking me.
The page in question is unfriendly towards blind people as well as anyone who uses a non-visual user agent. Whether it was deliberate or not is irrelevant. but, like I said, I do spend alot of time teaching and assiting peopel in "proper web development," and hopefully I have helped you understand the need for appropriate alt text on image objects.
1) Sorry abuout the "idiot" remark. I posted first thing in the morning so I was a little harsher than I could have been.
Sorry I accused you of wearing tutus :-)
2) What is up with the moderation here? Being labeled flamebait for calling someone an idiot is a little "Politically Correct".
Calling someone an idiot is flamebait especially if it gets flames in response.
3) I noticed that you were not hesitant in using some ad hominems (sp?) there. If calling you an "idiot" is flamebait the you calling me "a little sissy-ass-tutu-wearing bitch" is too...
That was the flame in response to the flamebait. maybe a moderation of flame would be appropriate, but then there would be alot of posts Score5:Flame. Moderating the flamebait kinda inhibits people from initiating flamefests. In other words, I would not have tossed a flame at you had you not initiated it.
... Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed...