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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? :)
"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]!
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
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.
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.
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!"
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
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.
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
Google is valuable to its customers because it is both capacious (3 billion web pages) and it seems to do a decent job ranking search results. The first advantage stems from the fact that Google relies on automated cataloguing agents (spiders). The second advantage is that certain algorithms try to heureustically gauge relevence (otherwise mirrors of /usr/dict/words would crop up far more often.
It is all but impossible to assemble a 3 billion entry database of webpages without automation, and it is even more difficult to edit it down. If, on a spot check, it is noticed that the actual relevence of results differs greatly from Google's relevence, it is not appropriate to hand edit the scores. Rather, new algorithms must be devised that recalibrate the "relevancy" of thousands or millions of pages, so any miscalibration will be, in the eyes of Google's users, shortlived. Hand editing isn't fast enough.
But you want to add lawyers to the mix. What a nifty idea. I suppose you have a plan involving the use of "selling pagerank" so as to offset the massive increase in legal fees paid by Google...
Meanwhile, the world will move onto another search engine.
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
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
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?
...And I found a document at SearchKing itself where they have commented it.
Here.
True ravers don't need drugs
Why would they want to hire someone who has to use google to find slashdot...
How to be a good businessman: Shut up.
Or, "What I don't say can't be used against me".
Karma: Food Fight (Mostly affected by Date Plate).
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...
This is not even reminiscant of a valid argument.
The CEO of Google could, perfectly within his rights, "hit the switch" right now . That's it; no more Google. Format the drives, massive eBay auction of the servers, and store the software safely in a vault for all eternity. By the logic above, that would "break" all of these businesses who, for whatever inexplicable reason are relying solely on Google's free services for their page hits. (Did I emphasize that enough? Free? Free. FREE !). Nobody has any right to be included in Google's database, likewise nobody has the right to demand that any site be removed from Google's database.
There's a concept in business known as "advertising". It is something that must be accounted for in a business plan, budgetted for annually, forecasted for the future and carefully considered at all times. Simply submitting your URL to an online form and hoping you get a good PageRank is NOT how a business advertises; it's how homepages and Blogs advertise.
BD Phone Home!
Shameless plug. Like you weren't expecting it.
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.