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Searchking Loses Suit Against Google
An anonymous reader submits this story that Searchking has lost its suit against Google for lowering search rankings. Silly lawsuit, good riddance. See our original story.
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Search for "search engine" at Google...hmmm maybe they should sue themselves?
...do you think that this would happen?
A lawsuit that ended in a positive way. Sheesh, why can't that happen more often? :)
I'm sure we are going to be hearing more of these types of stories in the future. Hopefully they will all be thrown out or what makes the internet great will be in trouble.
"SearchKing never broke a law, yet was accused, judged and executed without so much as a notice of intent. This affected thousands of innocent people without just cause."
There's no dispute that they didn't break any laws. But if I recall, didn't Search King manipulate the Google page rank system to artificially inflate their own rank? Google must have a ToS clause for that sort of thing.
"People should be allowed to keep midgets as pets."
- Gov. Jesse Ventura
searchking should sue their web designer first... before i do ahhh my eyes! the goggles, they do nothing!
Efren Belizario
headspeak.com
*sniffle* *sniffle* mr. judge... google won't pick me first even after i paid other people to act like i am a good choice... can you punish them and help me get picked first again!!! *sniffle* *sniffle* -searchking
those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do. -isaac asimov
Did you read the article? This had nothing to do with patents or copyrights, it had to do with SearchKing getting pissed because Google was reducing the rank of its links. Even the article synopsis indicates it's not about patents: "...a suit that alleged the company manipulated search results in its powerful Web index."
The judge dismissed the case because Google's system "constitutes opinions protected by the First Amendment."
SearchKing wanted to be "restored to its previous PageRank and to be awarded $75,000 in damages."
The jury was intimidated by the pigeon mafia.
---
Jedimom.com, choo choo choosing you!
StrategyTalk.com, PC Game Forums
Somehow this just reminds be of The Simpsons and Mr Plow vs Plow King...
from the article: Of course it's not a complete loss. SearchKing has received more attention with this lawsuit than they ever would have on their own business merits. That's part of why suing a big player like google or IBM is so lucrative even when your case is so flimsy. Attention whores.
Long live the King [of Searching]!
I see someone read avian chaos's guide to karma whoring.
suddenly I feel very tired
While the lawsuit was dismissed by the court, Google had to restore (voluntarily) the Searchking rankings. That means those damn search engine spammers can continue their evil doings. :( Google tried to adapt its system to abuse, but failed. Unfortunately, it seems that the more important Google becomes, the less freedom they will have to arbitrarily change (fine-tune) the system. Users lose as usual. :(
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
Silly lawsuit, good riddance.
Frivols, SCO is next.
GNS/Linux is not SCO!
Karma: The shiznight, mostly because I am the Drizzle.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Awesome points. It's so sad to see companies making money of the success of others.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Judge Vicki Miles-LaGrange on Tuesday denied a motion for a preliminary injunction
I assume that both parties did not incur any legal fees since there was no actual trial right (is that what an injunction is)? if they did incur legal fees, is SearchKing obligated to pay for Google? I sure do hope so!
Actually SearchKing got pissed after Google changed the rules in reaction to SearchKing abusing the ranking system in the first place.
:)
It's like a crybaby screaming because his parents realized he found a way to the cookie jar and finally locked the cupboard door... and it's quite sad that complains like these are allowed to made it to court and waste justice time...
Good thing they lost anyway. Sorry SearchKing, go find another business model
Karma cannot be described by words alone.
Obviously you are not familiar with slashdot, where government needs to stop every company (i.e. Microsoft) from doing "whatever they want with their own service".
Make sure you check out the response from the CEO of SearchKing (and probably the only employee):
http://gooogle.searchking.com
Juicy tidbits:
"Of course we are dissappointed with the judge's decision to dismiss the preliminary injunction, but it was not unexpected. We knew this was a case of a highly technical nature and that educating the court with only the short filings allowed would be very difficult."
"It was about the abuse of power. SearchKing never broke a law, yet was accused, judged and executed without so much as a notice of intent. This affected thousands of innocent people without just cause."
And then, the letter, the whole thing is so good that you just HAVE to read it in its entirety.
If you google for "Search King" you get a page of goatse & tubgirl links
It give you slashdot at -1?
Do the letters SCO come to mind?
From the letter
"
You have made several public statements that you hand review complaints before you assign a manual penalty. If you have someone on the payroll already whose job it is to evaluate specific sites and apply specific penalties, then stop wiping someone out and then making them beg you for forgivness. Instead, if you identify a problem, send an email to the webmaster alerting them to your findings and intentions and give the webmaster a minimum of 30 days to either correct the problem or contact information of someone to work something out."
This actually makes since, as it makes conflict resolution possible. Plus google could get to be able to improve the web as a whole. I think that a suspension from google is 3 months, and i bet you anything that google isn't always suspending good sites. Google should notify the site if they are being taken down do to DMCA etc...
Of course, Google is not the company Searchking should be going after.
Obviously, it's Mr. Search who poses the greatest danger.
"Call Mr. Search, that's the name... that name, again, is Mr. Search!"
This is somewhat offtopic...but when you do a google search for slashdot, there is an ad on the side for google software designers...guess they like the /. crowd :)
I'm curious as to why Google declined comment on the case. It just seemed a bit odd. They were clearly in the right and everything went there way as it should have. Maybe I'm just more interested in why CNet mentioned that Google declined comment in the article.
At any rate, yet another ridiculous law suit. Fortunately, this one ended up right.
The fallacy?
Assigning a monetary value to pagerank.
SearchKing believes they can set a price on the value of a pagerank and sell it to consumers (by using appropriate technology investment to increase the pagerank value). However, 1) Google has not granted resale right to this entity, and more importantly 2) it is too volatile to monetize. It's like trying to predict the % change at close of penny stocks.
Google is under no obligation to stabilize this "good", which then helps SearchKing capitalize on it.
It may seem (at first) that one could assign a monetary value to pagerank because (at least for popular sites) pagerank is relatively stable with respect to other sites of similar popularity. But the reason why a site achieves page rank is because of popularity.
By attempting to inflate a site's pagerank through a monetary transaction (thus using artificial methods), you are essentially trying to buy popularity with money. Unfortunately, paying SearchKing won't make other people like your site more, so that transaction won't work (unless SearchKing can make everyone visit the site in question, and then like it).
I think SearchKing and its employees' grasp on reality is a little bit deficient.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Spamming the legal system seems to be profitable.
I thought this was a really fun lawsuit. Basically Search King is upset that Google found a way to counter Search King's manipulation of the algorithm. This is like a shop lifter suing the kwikimart for putting the cigarettes behind the counter where they are out of reach.
Yes, not being able to manipulate the results hurts Search King. Google's changing the results helped those who weren't in the SEO business. Thank goodness a judge tossed out the case. Let's hope more suits get thrown out in the future.
They have to. It's called "finetuning the algorithm".
UC Berkeley is 16th place.
This site:
http://www.traffic-power.com
will get caught, and their sites moved down.
They manipulate content in web sites to link to thier own servers which then link back to the site, artificially increasing their rank.
check this "secret" page for sites, go to one and look at the source.
http://www.traffic-power.com/r
Bastards
Does it bother anyone else that these guys can come up with self-serving stupid lawsuits? I think Google should have countersued those guys for the hassle they caused. Resources and money that could have been used to improve Google basically went to a law firm for Google's defense. It sickens me what these guys did, much like what SCO is currently doing.
Actually, that's not true. If you read the actual judgement here , you'll find that the strongest argument centered around patents, in the following vein:
(1) Google claimed its rankings were opinion and thus protected by the First Amendment.
(2) Search King claimed that they couldn't be opinions precisely because Google holds a patent on the process used to make them.
(3) The judge found Search King's argument "not wholly without merit" (p. 6), but that Google could still alter the result of that patented process in a subjective manner and thus it was protected as free speech.
The critical argument by Search King (p. 5):
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
If you're trying to get your PageRanked increase, you should just start suing people. Haha.
wish i could have got drugs that good back in the day.
If opportunity came disguised as temptation, one knock would be enough.
3^2 * 67^1 * 977^1
Hello? He filed a lawsuit against Google, alleging that it committed improprieties. He called Google a monopoly and said that its actions were intended to squash competition. He's wrongfully accused Google of breaking a variety of laws and then has the audicity to claim that he's the victim?
A wake-up call: SearchKing was never accused of anything. Bob Massa publically stated that SearchKing was selling links in an attempt to boost his customers' PageRanks; a practice explicitly forbidden by Google (as described here):
This is obviously Google's prerogative and, moreover, what's best for Google's users (and the Internet) as a whole. So while SearchKing CEO Bob Massa is whining about Google attempting "to restrict the legal business of another without due process" and the "thousands of innocent people" that have suffered because of this decision, the truth of it is that he's the one trying to restrict the legal business of another and reduce the usability of Google, thereby negatively affecting the vast majority of Internet users.
That cements the asshole part. The cluelessness is even easier to prove. The lawsuit obviously never had a leg to stand on and everyone knew it. And while some might attribute it to a shrewd marketing move by Massa, it's garnered only niche coverage and a lot of negative publicity; the inevitable loss has effectively ended his business of attempting to sell PageRank and cost him legal fees besides. He releases a settlement offer, too, which means he either expects us to believe that this suit was ever about a noble endeavor to better the Internet or he honestly believed that there exists some legal standard by which he might've won the case. Yet more evidence: his settlement offer demands that Google put sites who have broken Google's terms of service on notice -- but Google's policy concerning people trying to artificially inflate PageRank is both obvious and public. His whole settlement offer would be laughable if it weren't so tragically stupid.
My vote, then, is that Bob Massa is both clueless and a complete asshole. This ought to be a poll, really.
If a corporation is a personhood, is owning stock slavery?
So, I am pleased by this ruling not only for what it means for google, but for what it may mean for DNSbls.
Prime numbers are exactly what Alan Greenspan says they are -S. Minsky
Operator! Give me the number for 911!
I for one welcome our new SCOviet Russian overlords to whom all our base are belong.
It is obvious google justly won the lawsuit, but the question remains whether it is proper that one search engine should accumulate so much power. Suppose one day google is sold to Microsoft. Will you then start using another search engine? I currently don't know of another engine which even gets near google's quality. What should we do then? Wait until the patent on PageRank expires? Or perhaps we should put our faith on the google owners never to do such a thing?
I'd like to see Google counter-sue SearchKing and put them out of business for good.
~S
...And I found a document at SearchKing itself where they have commented it.
Here.
True ravers don't need drugs
Google does have problems with its penalties system.
Google says to SEO's:
"A good rule of thumb is whether you'd feel comfortable explaining what you've done to a website that competes with you"
Making Google sound like it is a judge in a confrontation between opposing websites.
But thats not the case, an accuser makes a complaint of Spam, Google NEVER CONTACTS THE ACCUSED SITE, it sits in judgement with its thinking clouded by the comments from the Spam report, and never gets the opposing view.
Flip that question over, when Google penalises a site to a PR0 it is deliberately producing a sub-optimal result.
It even talks about "Cleaning-Up" the site, so the aim is clearly to get sites changed to suit the limits of Google's Spam filters.
Can Google explain to its searchers that it knowingly produces a sub-optimal result due to technical weaknesses in its algorithms?
Early on in the raids on japan, they determined that fire was the perfect weapon against concentrated japanese cities, because of all the wood and paper construction. Before they had "the bomb" perfected, one of the techniques they were contemplating was attaching small incinderary(sp?) devices to bats, of all things. The scheme was to release the bats over a wide area, they would fly down and immediate try to hide up under eaves, etc in buildings, then the devices would go off and start a fire. I think it was attempted once or twice but was never much of a success. The japanese had a variant they used against the US, but it was simpler, cheap high altitude weather baloons modified to carry devices, they floated them over the US from far away, hoping to cause massive forest fires. Sort of real slow stealth ICBB-type action. That was only marginally sucessful for them, a few fires started.
Another weird one-I think they perfected it and it's a secret now, and most likely there have been human experiments-was they had dogs wired so the handlers could "steer" them remotely. I remember seeing an army newsreel on this one. They attached explosives to the dogs, then aimed them down the battlefield, and the plan was to use them to take out tanks, machine gun emplacements, other bunkers, etc. Kamikaze dogs. I have forgotten now the exact details, but they used radios and the dogs brains or whatever were wired up. That was pretty spooky, because they were doing this in the 50s when I saw the piece. No telling how far they've gotten since then with that initial research.
Silly Searchking, lawsuits are for fat people!
Not noteable, IMO a rubbish article.
Probably that is all not that accurate of a statement. People don't like microsoft that much because microsoft does things to OTHER companies and to peoples computers that are extremely annoying, and in several cases now, illegal. And they just..keep... doing it, they refuse to stop or get a clue. Purposelly coding their stuff so it breaks third parties stuff, etc, etc. Strong arming companies with carrot/stick action to only use their OS, or they'll kill them by releasing it to other hardware companies much cheaper, and so on and so forth. Ignoring bugs for months or years, whatever. Taking security as job #9765, and putting profits over better quality, using marketing instead of coding to sell software. Just bogus business ethics that go beyond the normal "create a decent product, release it, make it better, no lying or shenaningans", which is a much better business model. It's their ethics above even their quality that causes concern. If they hadn't done all that stuff, there wouldn't be near the acrimony. You can do business in our society, but it's considered uncool to be a lying weasel predator. When other companies get caught at something similar, they get noticed and put down as well. They don't get any get out of jail free card just "because". They deserve all the dissin they got and still get, because they started it frankly. It was their choice, people asked them not to, they told the world to F off, they were going to do whatever they wanted to, because they were/still are strong enough to get away with it.. So screw them, thankewverymuch, they suck, that's why they sucked in the past, and why they will continue to suck in the future, because they are unrepentent and recidivist felons. The corporate officers deserve JAIL TIME, not just fines, sitting in club fed..
there ya go
The average usenet troll is probably more reasonable than the "offer to settle".
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Server: Apache/1.3.26 (Linux) mod_jk mod_perl/1.27 DAV/1.0.3 FrontPage/5.0.2.2510 PHP/4.2.2 mod_ssl/2.8.10 OpenSSL/0.9.6b
Enough said.
I figured they set things up so that 'searchking' would turn up if you did an actual search for 'searchking', since lots of people were intrested in seeing their site after news of the lawsuit came out.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
The reason for this is that a few years back he got a visit from Interpol, who had searched for a particular string ('illegal drugs for sale' or something), and found that his random ordering contained it. He had a hard job trying to explain that it wasn't a concealed message...
Why is it up to him to explain that?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
It is great to see this lawsuit turn out the way it should. It is a shame that the same thing didn't happen with nissan.com like it should have.
Am I wrong it thinking that because google is a private company they can do whatever they want with their own service?
Short answer, yes. It gets more complicated than this poor old brain can grasp, but goes something like this. The village outcast is allowed to be rude and obnoxious. The village mayor and most of its citizenry are not. The rules are complex and fluid, but along with the trust of the public goes an obligation to honor that trust. Google has come a long way since its beginnings, and is now sufficiently established that an abrupt and capricious change of personality would be a bad thing. Google has of course an extreme amount of lattitude in how it identifies and carries out it mission, but there are limits, even if they're extremely vague.
Whenever I read the word 'searchking', I can't help but think of Popeye 'searchking' for Olive Oyl or Bluto. :)
creation science book
They feel this way because google is so popular that, with some businesses online, google can make or break you. I have a friend who has a business, and how much money he makes in a month is directly related to his pagerank. Now, he understands that google re-indexes all the time, and that things are tweaked all the time, and that google owes him nothing... but in the end, it's still important to him what his pagerank is, and he will do what he has to do in order to get that number higher.
If it's not proper, feel free to start your own search engine, eh?
Google didn't abuse monopoly power to get where they are; they have not in any way coerced or threatened any other search engine, they simply made a search system that was innovative, unique, and desirable to people. They didn't rest their success on marketing, or anything else but pure technological innovation.
Now, I don't think google can do no wrong, they are a company, they have a bottom line... but so far, the reason they are on top is because google provides the results we want. EVery other search engine, if you don't remember, provided CRAP for links, either irrelevant, or paid placements.
Pagerank isnt' patented, is it? Got a patent number? I'd like to read how it works.
I thought the pagerank formula was secret...
Since they are nowhere near a monopoly on search engines on the Internet, they're responsible to no one for anything. As I said in an earlier post, they could shut down abruptly and cause the same ripples in the WWW.
If all the other major (1 billion plus indexed pages) engines were defeated by Google, I'll concede that then, and only then do they hold some responsibility for their listings. But I don't forsee MSN, Yahoo, AltaVista et al. closing up shop any time soon.
BD Phone Home!
Shameless plug. Like you weren't expecting it.
Google is under no obligation to make pagerank have any qualities other than what it deems to be important to google's users.
:)
Consider this: if google takes tecnhological measures against SearchKing specifically, then google has invested its own resources into purposefully debasing SearchKing results. The only reason it would do that is because Google believes SearchKing is skewing the value of pagerank away from google's intent, thus making the metric less useful to Google users. In other words, the sites that SearchKing make popular must not actually be representative of the search terms. By investing its own time and money into combating sites who skew pagerank, it defines its own monetary value for the pagerank according to its own terms.
Kinda obvious, once you've thought about it.
Sites who invest in SearchKing's services would be better off in terms of getting good Google rankings if they applied that money to improving their own site content. I speculate that this may be universally true, given enough time for Google to react with any technological countermeasures. Anyone care to do a study?
Rather than adapt to Google's strategy by introducing new countermeasures, SearchKing decides to file this frivoulous civil suit. That money would have been better spent on the former, and it would be all fair in the spirit of capitalism and healthy competetion.
I'm glad that judge had enough good sense to see that this was a sham, despite the hi-tech, abstract nature of the dispute.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
On top of that, the service they provide is highly subjective and therefore impossible to rate. And on top of THAT, SearchKing pages are, practically by definition, NOT the pages you want - they're they pages they want you to see. So even if we do assume that Google, because of it's value, should be taken by eminent domain and/or heavily legislated, SearchKing STILL wouldn't have had a case.
But Google is not obliged to fully implement this patent.
A brief reading of the patent would indicate that it covers the initial, less mature page rank algorithm that google started with (and is highly vulnerable to link farming). It's number 6,285,999 if you're interested.
I think that the biggest benefit to SearchKing from this lawsuit would be all the media attention it received. Maybe the courts need a "moderation" system.
Sorry searchking, you've just been moderated -1 Troll, no publicity for this trial is allowed
Seriously though, it seems that the legal system does have a serious troll problem, with unfounded lawsuits simply for intimidation, fame, or quickcash (usually against those who find it cheaper to pay out than go to court).
You are preaching to the choir my man.
I'm just saying that I can see how people may feel that some action by google is "wrong" or "Unfair" or that they have been "Judged".
I never said they had a right to any restitution, just that I can see how it would impact them.
What do you mean, you think google should be REGULATED?
ANYONE is free to purchase technology from them, start their own search engine to compete with it, or WHATEVER. "Control of such a vital tool?"
They control THEIR tool, and absolutely NOTHING they do prevents anyone from doing anything else. They are not an illegal monopoly and don't do anything that would seem to violate antitrust issues, legally or morally.
Remember, a monopoly is not a bad thing or an illegal thing, it's when a monopoly abuses it's position that it's bad.
Google can lose it's popularity just as fast as it gained it if they screw up and change things.
Ok, go on then:
Explain to us all why the scientology links were removed from Google.