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Suing Google Over Pagerank
Yardboy wrote in to tell us about a story from Reuters describing a lawsuit by parental advice company Kinderstart.com against Google for 'charging it unfairly deprived the company of customers by downgrading its search-result ranking without reason or warning.' Kinderssart claims Google is responsible for 'a "cataclysmic" 70 percent fall in its audience -- and a resulting 80 percent decline in revenue.' I guess the courts will now decide: Can google taketh what they giveth?
They aren't suing because of bad rankings. They are suing because Google wont say why it ranks some sites hight and bans other sites. There is more merit in this case than most would think.
SecurityPub.com
Kinderstart, realizing their website sucks, announces a lawsuit against Google for a detrimental impact to their website traffic. Website activity jumps 3000% on the news, mainly from a nerd news site reporting the lawsuit. Slashdot is credited with a 120% increase in revenue for nerds that now know how to raise their kids.
-- NeonRonin
Can google taketh what they giveth?
Sorry, but that's just wrong. I know you're trying to sound cute and all, but even Shakespeare would say "Can google take what they give?"
those pigeons, sue them!!!
From TFA:
"aggressively defends the secrecy of its patented search ranking system"
Is it patented or secret? I mean it can't be both.
They have been astroturfing all over the place and I don't see any actual content pages.
They advertise themselves as a search engine.
Google still indexes over 25000 pages by them, and from my initial examination, theres no content.
They appear to be just a linkfarm
Google aren't wrong, this kind of thing is what we have been asking them to do for ages (clear out the crap)
liqbase
Google is a private company with a private database. They have no obligation to rank any site equally, or even at all! In fact, Google could arbitrarily decide that some company was "bad" and simply remove them from their database. Kinderstart has no case, not even with their fractured English. Google is a corporation, not a public service, even though they seem like it on occasion.
Silence is golden... and duct tape is silver.
Anyone that depends on an external party for their marketing had better get it in writing. No contract? Tough luck.
You get what you pay for, if you're lucky.
When you want something built, come see me. If you want correct grammar and spelling, get a F*ing liberal arts student.
Why does this website think it can sue a company for a service it is providing them for free?
Furthermore, pagerank is explained here and here. Finally, if 70% of their audience and 80% of their revenue SOLELY relies on Google, then they need to change the way they advertise their site and profit from it. Looking at their site, they look just like a plain directory of links; they probably make money from advertising.
And their argument is pretty damn lame, saying Google is "depriving their customers". Well, their customers already know about their company, and thus should easily be able to find them again. It would be potential customers that might lose it.
I think Google should countersue, claiming that Kinderstart's lack of using paid advertisements on Google has resulted in a depression of Google's stock prices. Or something equally outrageous.
It would be a sad day if Google is forced to open its pagerank system, as search results would be listed in order of the cleverness of a company to exploit their system, instead of actual relevence of the search.
make world, not war
They have since cleaned up their site . . . but they were using every type of outmoded, pseudo seo hacks - alt tag spamming, invisible #FFFFFF links at the bottom of their pages pointing to keyword spam duplicate pages ad nauseum
So don't whine if you get back slapped
The complaint accuses Google, as the dominant provider of Web searches, of violating KinderStart's constitutional right to free speech by blocking search engine results showing Web site content and other communications.
Google is a private company. It has no obligation to endorse Kinderstart's company than any others.
Like I have said before, the constituion gives you a right to freedom of speech, it does not guarentee you an audience. Saying Google should be forced to index Kinderstart *at all*, let alone that it should enfoce some ranking formula, would be akin to saying that a library should be forced to hold a certain book, or that a televsion station be forced to air a certain show.
Don't like the shows on a network? Change the channel. Don't like the results Google provides? Use another engine. It's not like they have a monopoly on web searching.
took the words right out of my mouth
"Everything worth innovating today will go to court tomorrow."
If this lawsuit fails, they plan to sue everyone who isn't one of their customers for depriving them of revenue.
English is easier said than done.
Are they going to sue me because I dont visit their website and look at their pages? I sense a bit of corporate "waaaaaaaaa" going on here.
Why do overlook and oversee mean opposite things?
Without having established some sort of contract that they can show paragraph and line where Google breached it, they're SOL.
/NOT/ build your business to revolve around someone else's service. That would be like McDonalds suing some city if people started driving by less on their street.
You should
you can see how their traffic started falling here
SecurityPub.com
maybe I should suing google too. who knows my site traffic will increase...
If dreams are like movies then memories are films about ghost..
I don't see the problem. Kinderstart.com still is number four on search results from google and the first three are offshoots of the parent company. Wahhhhhhh! It's like blaming the phone book for a loss in sales because you were too cheap to take out a full page ad, or the newspaper for not hosting a daily column about your business.
"Jeremy, you need to get to an internet cafe and cut and paste some appropriate sentiments about me from the world wide
from the article: The complaint accuses Google, as the dominant provider of Web searches, of violating KinderStart's constitutional right to free speech by blocking search engine results showing Web site content and other communications. This sounds like trying to sue a newspaper for not publishing a story about your event because it denies you communication about your event. I guess the newspapers should be sued for not saying why they decide to cover some stories but not others.
This is plain BullShit, Google do what they want on their pages, and because they use a certain way to organise information and people like it, does't mean that they have to explain anything, nobody force you to use Google. If this company want to be up, they can pay to advertise on Google, end of the story, otherwise, they have to face the Google way like the rest of us, meaning having a good website and not trying to cheat!
IIRC It was already upheld in a court that search results and rankings were officially considered "opinion", and as such was constitutionally-protected free speech.
If my opinion is that your site sucks, you can't sue me for that.
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
In addition, from what I understand, Google pagerank is decided by people on a website voting on it. If people think that Kinderstart is trash, it's not Google's fault.
Just in case you'd like to visit Kinderstart's website and oh, er, use some bandwidth while viewing as much of it as you can, don't let me stop you!
What an offensive tagline, "Because kids don't come with an instruction manual." Evolution builds the instruction manual right into the parents and kids. Idiots.
without the actual parameters or tweaks (eg. if you have been linked from warez sites you take a penalty).
Does Google actually use this rule to compute ranking? It seems that the warez community could perform a DoS on a major publisher of proprietary software merely by linking to its website.
Why are they going after google? This seems more like the web designers fault, and not google's problem.
Being as vague as possible, I once did some work for a company who loved the results I was getting them in their page ranking. Then, one of the 'managers' came up and said that one person was complaining about the design of the site. I tried for a week to explain that any changes would result in a drastic drop in our page rank. I've actually studied the google patent filing, and was able to learn some important details that were used in the site constructively to help the ranking.
Since it wasnt my company, all I could do was explain what I thought the results of this decision would be. I ended up 'changing' the page layout to satisfy the clueless management, onlt to see a 15% drop in traffic and a fall from 6/10 to 4/10 in page ranking on google. Did I try to say it was google's fault? Hell no! I knew exactly where the blame was to be placed, and I vocally explained what was going on, why it was going on, and whos decision it was to make this change.
Suprisingly, they no longer question my ability to do my job. And that was shortly followed by a raise after I pointed out that I was very disapointed that I had to associate my name with such crappy performance, that was a result of poor decisions I warned against. And yes, it is VERY difficult to regain page ranking. But not impossible, unless of course your page uses every nasty trick in the book for optimization.
But the part about this company filing a lawsuit against google based on free speech? Is that a joke? It sounds like the lawyers this company hired are about as incompetent as their web designers.
Let me get this straight...
1) Private company freely provides service
2) It is found useful by individuals and companies for finding one another
3) Its use becomes wide-spread and significant in the success of companies (maybe)
4) One particular company sues provider of this free service for not catering to them
Not that this is the first one to bite the hand that feeds.
I'm suing Kinderstart for not linking to me.
The PageRank algorithm is patented (patent 6,285,999) and public.
But Google's results are much more than page rank. It also involves other algorithms relating to the search keys for a particular search. And there are tuning factors to the particular PageRank implementation. Google's proprietary tweaks keep ahead of the people who try to artificially inflate their page rank (like, apparently, these guys). Those are secret, and search engine optimizers would dearly love to know them so that they could fake out Google.
This seems to be a rather uninteresting civil suit that happens to involve Google.
The way I see it, Google has not held up their end of this mysterious aggreement between the two parties. I think the two companies should just part ways. They are to have no associations with each other that would facillitate other disaggreements. To this end, Kinderstart should not have any links or mention of Google on their site and vice-versa.
Stay tuned for new sig...
http://www.kinderstart.com:8080/kindertoday/114264 8153
The funny thing is, it looks like they are using slash!
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
Your "constitutional right to free speech" is a restriction on the actions of the federal government, and through incorporation, the states. It does not require any private entity to provide you a forum, listen to you, or to treat you fairly, whatever you think that might mean.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Classic. Maybe they need to pony up and get their name in the adsense block?!?!?
Wait.... ...Aren't we helping them with their google rank now? Slashdotting someone has to help their page rank in some way, shape or form.
Warning: Corny karma killing post above.
There's one other thing to consider, besides who's "right" or "wrong"-- what would the consequences of Kinderstart winning this case? That's easy: it would kill Google and every other search engine based in the U.S. I can't imagine how a search engine could possibly keep in business when every single day-to-day change of internal metrics has to be documented and justified in order to protect the firm legally. It would just be ridiculous. You couldn't list or not list or give more or give less pagerank to any page on any site at all without being liable to just about everyone. Kinderstart probably doesn't have jack of a case, but even if they did, Congress would (if they're not asleep at the switch) have to meddle instantly before everything went to hell.
This place is a giant collection of links.
If you click on any category theres a very good chance that the first few links listed will give you error 404.
I could use google to make this website in a few hours. It has no original content to add.
1 (short ton / firkin) = 89.1432354 slugs / keg
I guess the next natural step is to throw a crappy website together and then sue kinderstart.com for failing to link to it. In the unlikely event that they DO link to it, I'll just sue them for my 'losses' due to them losing 70% of their traffic (and so reducing the visibility of their link to my crappy content free site).
Or we could all just grow up and realize that nobody, including a search engine, is legally obligated to 'recommend' (however mildly) any other site unless a private contract is in place.
Perhaps they should put up some pictures of park benches statues and bread crumbs if they want Google's ranking system to rate them higher.
It's nothing but another one of those "web directory" sites, full of links to other sites that were likely conned into paying KinderStart for the listing.
The site looks like the last time it was updated was 2000, the year on their site copyright. Most of the links don't even work.
I've built sites for these types of companies (back when I was starting out). Its probably just one or two people working out of their garage, fully expecting that the 10,000 domain names they purchased entitle them to millions of dollars. Quite sad, really.
Google has no obligation to pay their rent, and the Internet has no use for this trash. Get a real fucking job.
I think if the issue has to have any merit, it will be based on proving google's dominance to such an extent as to be monopolistic and that barring a site from google bars it from the net effectively - which with yahoo around won't be easy.
perhaps if the site was barred for political,racial or anythign that deals with the idea of the content rather than, as it seems, the quality of it, perhaps there might have been a suit.
I think google can walk with this one simply stating they are trying to eliminate crap sites so as to user experience better. Besides lowering page ranks is not exactly eliminating free speech, rather eliminating google's approximation of the page's value. Plus the fact that they are seeking economic gain from free speech probably weakens their case a whole lot. So the whole free speech arguemtn is non existent, thoguht itl be intersting to see if it comes up in some other issue.
Anyway, google can potray itslef as giving free consultancy to the users. The sites are not their clients and they do not owe anything to them.
Page rank is completely broken, it looks like google realizes this and it doesn't seem to affect search results as much as it used to. Page rank mostly has to do with link webs, and it looks like google finally detected that the website in question was linking to a bunch of pointless crap so decided to tank its page rank. It could have tanked it's position in the search result in many other ways.
Proof that pagerank is broken: my livejournal has a (live) page rank of 5 (going down to 4 occasionally). This and that I've seen how easily PR can be inflated.
~= scwizard =~
Did anyone notice that the articles on their site are formated really similarly to slashdot's articles? Replies are missing, but the headers and the ownership comment at the bottom are basically the same.
Read U.S. Pat. No. 6,526,440. Seriously, it's quite informative.
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
Yale is suing U. S. News and World Report for unfairly depriving the university of applicants by downgrading its overall ranking to #3, having formerly ranked it as tied with Harvard for #1, without reason or warning...
Pluto is suing the Rose Center for Earth and Space in New York City for depriving it of attention by school children by downgrading its status from "planet" to "biggest object in the Kuiper belt," without reason or warning...
and Texas is suing Alaska for unfairly depriving it of bragging rights by downgrading its rank among states listed by area, without reason or warning.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Inciteful
Stay tuned for new sig...
Google will kill your rankings iff you are pulling pranks with your pages. For example, if you show one page to google and another to regular users(cloaking), then Google will nuke you. That is stated in their FAQ page as well as other sites. What kinderstart is upset about is that they believe that they should be notified that they were cheating AND got caught. Google has no responsibility to notify somebody that they were caught cheating. They are a private business. Now, it would be nice if Google would offer a private e-mail to all those that got caught to converse with. But Google limits outside contact so that they are not spending outlandous money on idiots like kinderstart.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Google didn't give it to them, so they're making a high-profile lawsuit instead. Ingenious.
Expected time to finish is 1 hour and 60 minutes.
...or does it actually say "Google shall make no law... "
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
They use
Might Google decide to cut them out there too? Looks like Kindersmart maybe sh&#tting on the hand that feeds them. Interesting they also think that a search engine competitor should promote their second rate search. They are already selling ads for them - maybe Google should pay for their hosting too.
5) Profit!!!
The complaint accuses Google, as the dominant provider of Web searches, of violating KinderStart's constitutional right to free speech by blocking search engine results showing Web site content and other communications.
I hope this company is bankrupted by their own legal fees. Google isnt required to provide them with any service at all.
Contrary to popular belief, Unix is user friendly. It just happens to be particular about who it makes friends with.
A project with people adding sites to an index? You mean like the open directory (http://dmoz.org/ or even http://www.google.com/dirhp)
That's definitely the solution. I can always find exactly what I'm looking for with Open Directory, but not with Google.
Give me a break. Maybe you just need to learn how to search? Or maybe you should click the little link at the bottom of your bad search results that says "Dissatisfied? Help us improve." You won't find that at Yahoo.
Since this site is just another one of those spammy links sites; will their customers (advertisers) now sue kinderstart.com? It seems that they have justified that sort of suit by their suit against google.
Humor from a Genetically Molested Mind
Do you know how many sites are on the net? It would take Google forever to tell each company why they are ranked where they are. Google does however tell site masters how they can help their site get indexed on their search engine. http://www.google.com/webmasters Google isn't responsible for how high a site ranks, the owner of the site is. Google just sends out an algo that list the "most relevent" or "most popular" sites.
Can I bum a sig?
I'm suing the moderators for depriving me of my right to free speech by not modding this comment up, without reason or warning!
What the fuck? If you'd read Bob's guide to using the apostrophe properly, you'd have noticed that the last rule was DON'T use an apostrophe wherever you feel like it.
The mind-reading captcha for this post is 'bashing'.
If you rely only on SEO (Search Engine Optimization) focused mainly on one search engine then you are putting all your eggs in one basket. If you contact webmasters with similar sites and exchange hard links then both of you will get regular steady traffic to the benefit of both. Hard links between similar friendly sites has been the way to do it for ages and still will be in the future. You see, search engine traffic is there one day and gone tomorrow. Then you get nothing for a month and suddenly your server looks like it's about to die because you're among the first five entries for some interesting keyword. Search Engine Traffic comes and goes. Any not-totally-n00b webmaster knows this. And whining about it won't help you.
The whole issue is just stupid. If I link to some site from my website and then remove the link because I for any reason no longer like that site, and they sue.. I'd laught. This lawsuit is just a redicilous pr-stunt.
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
Google searches for "Litiguous Idiots" or "Catholic Priest Funzone" just started ranking kinderstart.com at the top of the page.
Google is, as has already been mentioned, a public company. It does have certain fiduciary responsibilities to its shareholders, so the management can't for example, decide to shut down operations, abscond with the profits, and move to the Bahamas.
Beyond that, though, any company still has to operate within the law. Just ask Microsoft, which is grappling with EU law and has fought the US Justice Department and various US states over the years. Virtually any large company you can think of has been sued for running afoul of the law in some fashion, and will get sued again in the future.
Apple has been successfully sued over bad batteries. Yahoo was sued in France for allowing Nazi content. I'm sure we're all familiar with Tyco, Enron, and Worldcom.
Personally I think this suit against Google doesn't have much of a chance, because Google's behavior doesn't seem at all abusive or discriminatory. Frankly, I'd be suprised if it survives Google's summary judgment motion (which will surely be forthcoming).
That said, companies can't do whatever they want, even with data they have gathered on their own. They still have to live within the same laws as the rest of us. Ayn Rand wouldn't have liked it, but that's the way it is.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
"... violating KinderStart's constitutional right to free speech by blocking search engine results ..."
:-?
:-(
I wasn't aware the the "freedom of speech" of people included the right to demand from the audience to "spread the word".
And it's ofcourse allso *very* funny that one "search engine" (which "KinderStart" seems to be) demands to be linked to by/from one of it's competitors.
Besides that : I allways get quite annoyed when my Googling for information leads me to a search-result page of *another* engine (which is, from my point-of-view, counter-productive), and not to the page itself.
Nope, this case does not seem to have any merrit (or the Judge must regard Google as a(n important) public service, which would/should give Google the right to receive tax-funding), so it looks like yet another "lets see if we can up our visibility this way" ploy.
Didn't RTFA, and this is probably redundant and trolling, but you best mod me up or I'll sue!
EvilCON - Made Famous by
Replace Google with Microsoft.
Imagine Microsoft says it has the definitive authoritative search engine, and then blocks Oracle from the results. Now when you search for anything related to databases you don't get Oracle, even searches directly related to do with Oracle databases.
Are you OK with that now?
Google owes Kinderstart *nothing*, other than a good authoritative search result, because thats what they've promised to deliver. So anytime they end up in court it will come down to this 'can it be argued to be fair'.
And you guys shouldn't argue that 'they're a private business and can do *anything* they want', because what will happen when its Microsoft attacking its competitors? What will you argue then? What about when its Microsoft browser blocking Google.com?? Still OK with that?
I agree Google will win this one, because if you search for kinderstart, they are in the listings, and kinderstart.com does bring up the page. But type in [kinderstart animal friends] which is right on their home page, and you get this:
http://carse.roxywatchsummer2002.info/
Thats not good, Google do need to clean up things in this result set.
Won't someone please think of the children?
Also, Google kills a kitten everytime you conduct a search. Please use MS search, it is safe for children and kittens because MS cares.
Sincerely,
S. Steve Balmer, ESQ.
What about that bit where God says to Abraham "Sacrifice your child" and when he's about to do it God says "Ha! Ha! Just kidding." I thought that was pretty funny in a macabre sort of way. Or that bit where Adam and Eve are going round naked and God plants this tree in an obvious place with fruit on it that has the bizarre property that when you eat it you suddenly get embarassed about nakedness. What is this stuff if not comedy?
"The White House is not an intelligence-gathering agency," -- Scott McClellan, Whitehouse spokesman.
Mod Parent (-1, Wrong)
No, Google is a public company. You see there's this obscure institution called the "stock market"...
No, Google offered some shares to be exchanged on a particular market, making them a publically traded company, but they are in fact, a private entity all the same. In this short review of high school level Social Studies, the public sector is the Government, and the private sector is everything else. The unrelated term "publically traded" simply means that there are no buyer restrictions on who may own or trade their stocks. There is such a thing as stocks that are not publically traded as well.
Regardless of the trading of their stock certificates in the marketplace, Google does not gain some new requirement to rank companies/sites according to anyone elses wishes on how they should be ranked.
~Rebecca
...like anyone would want to do this ;) check it out:
9 7638
http://www.kinderstart.com:8080/kindertoday/11380
Just in case you'd like to visit Kinderstart's website and oh, er, use some bandwidth while viewing as much of it as you can, don't let me stop you!
Since they're trying to get their page views UP - apparently to increase advertising revenue - that might actually help their bottom line.
On the other hand, a flood of people viewing them because of the controversy, with no interest in their sponsor's products, might harm them further in the long term, by hurting the price/performance ratio of advertising with them, hitting their advertisers in their pocketbooks with no compensating return.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
What keyword did Kinderstart expect to get hits from, anyway? "Daycare"? "child care"? What they're probably unhappy about is that "daycare.com" is #1 for "daycare", and Kinderstart is nowhere.
Umm... so like.. can I sue google cause my ISP/~username page isn't showing up in their search results..
What the hell, it's a searchn engine... it crawls crap, it ranks crap, there is no inherent "right" to have my site shown at all , let alone at a particular rank... unless I'm willing to pay for it.
Once some SE does rank me, I certainly expect that rank to change.
Then lets do what slashdot does best.. Lets give them the (unpaying) traffic they want!
Not similar at all.
It would only be analogous if kinderstart had been selling web search services and Google had achieved market dominance selling some OTHER product (say, a browser) and both used it both to cross-subsidize a new free search engine and tie it into their dominant product (say, by having a built-in "search via google" button with no corresponding "search via kinderstadt" button).
Kinderstadt is griping that Google's free search engine - which they didn't pay for - isn't doing what they want. Tough.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I think the forum has made it clear that Google, as a private company (though "publicly traded") has no obligations to Kinderstart under the First Amendment, so their lawsuit is bunk. BUT Kinderstart did a good think for their business by suing Google. How many people here after looking at this article looked at Kindercrap.com too see what it is? Would any of us have gone there otherwise? So the lawsuit is going to easily die very quickly, but suing Google gets you on the front page of the news! It even got the company some free advertising here on Slashdot of all places!
KinderToday.com, News that Burps?!
(Serious. Check the parent URL.)
Computer Go: Writing Software to Play the Ancient Game of Go
Now with that much publicity they are on the RADAR of Ferrero for sure!
Ferrero is defending their Kinder-??? trademarks very harshly.
They are suing websites with "kinder" in them left and right.
I checked out kinderstart's site. Frankly it sucks. Perhaps that's why the expereinced huge drops in traffic. If it crawls with little to no traffic, how the h*ll did it run with actual users?
And if I search their site for "search engine", Google is nowhere to be found on the first page of results. Perhaps Google should sue Kinderstart for not appearing first in Kinderstarts search results.
Sigh, you make this sh*t up.
Google should "accidentally" cause any kinderstart searches to bring up porn. Take that losers!
So, let's say I have a site, my site, but publically and freely accessible on the net. Let's suppose I dedicate a part of my site to recommend some other sites which I find interesting, good, trustworthy, etc. You can say that I have an algorithm by which I produce a ranking based on the number of sites I usually visit. Then, someday, a wierdo comes up to me and sues me because his site is lower on my list than some other sites. I'm not a company like Google or any other indexing&search company, still, the principle isn't far. This is so utterly nonsense that I can't even find the word to describe how sorry I feel for such idiots. Not that we haven't seen some similar nonsense-smelling sue-stories recently.
And btw, a site's pagerank value might be low because of several things, like there are not many high ranking sites linking to it or there aren't a high number of visitors, among many other things. Saying that I have less visitors - and less revenue [well, this sounds like RIAA complaining about non-bought albums like they knew exactly how many they would have sold] - because low ranking is a very superficial to say the least.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
The complaint accuses Google, as the dominant provider of Web searches, of violating KinderStart's constitutional right to free speech by blocking search engine results showing Web site content and other communications.
Hmm... Is there even any free speech to talk about here?
I mean, Google owns their index.
Isn't this like complaining about free speech once a moderator kills your post on a forum?
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
KinderStart is kind of like Yahoo!, but intended for Children's use. If you'd went to their little site, you'd see this.
Since this is being the case, they're trying to claim Google is an overglorified DNS layer. Sorry, since the term
"KinderStart" is in your domain name, I don't see plugging in KinderStart and not coming up with a Google hit as being as much of a problem since it's nothing for someone to put "www.kinderstart.com" into their browser- and since Google doesn't filter the link returns like you do, it's no less safe for someone to find it via Google over just plugging in a domain name at random. Better yet, if you plug in "kid safe search engines" in Google, MSN, Yahoo!, etc. you don't GET KinderStart in the list of potentials- even though that's what they really are.
The claims they're making just doesn't work. 70% drop in revenues because of this? Could it be that they're not as good as they think they are, or aren't advertising like they ought to be instead?
I suspect they're going to get the same thing told to them that SearchKing got told- for the reasons I give above.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
because we all know the are well known for having sex often.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
Excellent post -- I enjoyed it, but then my stomach turned when you brought up the DMCA. How would that possibly tie in? It sounds like you're using the DMCA as a catch-all for any strange legal theory, and sounds like FUD. Was this just a slip-up, or do you have a theory?
Otherwise, excellent post!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_sector
use some common sense when interpreting people comments before launching into a canned lecture.
Of course, once their lawsuit drops off the front page of Slashdot, their traffic is going to drop to 3% of what it was at it's height, then they'll file a class action lawsuit against Slashdot asking for the documentation on how Slashdot decides what submissions make it onto the front page.
Their action class will be the millions of slashdot readers who have had perfectly (un)reasonable submissions rejected in favor of 3rd generation dupes of lame stories.
Cmdr. Taco will give them a cockroach eaten restaurant napkin with the notes from the latest editor brainstorming session and Kinderstart will respond by hiring Boies, Schiller & Flexner to "suck them dry in disclosure.".
[[ Microsoft, realizing that this is a good opportunity to silence a hot-bed of anti-Microsoft activity will buy a copy of Kinderstart's software for every one of their employees and contractors. ("or whatever it is that they sell"). ]]
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
"Why do you think people are running away from the zombies, son?" "I just assumed they didn't want their brains eaten." "Look again."
What sound do people on rollercoasters make? Hint: it's not Xbox 360.
This lawsuit is so ridiculous in its rationale that I'm beginning to wonder if Google set this up themselves somehow just to add more karma points to the company. After all, they appear to be ready to partially give in to the governments demands, so they need a little good sympathetic PR to help alleviate the slight drop in Good-Guy status they'll receive when they do. I just don't see how the folks at Kinderstart could see any chance in hell of winning this. Then again, maybe they just took a page out of the Hollywood playbook - sometimes bad PR is the best PR.
"The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well."
Did they sue Yahoo! and MSN too, or have we all just accepted Google as the reigning King of Web Search?
Information wants to be anthropomorphized!
Sue God for killing my grandpa. Or for giving his cancer in the first place. I'm getting all your riches God you heartless bastard!
Perhaps Kinderstart would like to reveal how much money they donated to Google when their rank was high. Fair is fair, right? I feel certain they must have offered up a huge pot of cash if Google was single-handedly responsible for such a large share of their audience, and therefore their revenues.
Friends Don't Let Friends Drink and Post
...that they use Google Ads on all of their pages?
The complaint accuses Google, as the dominant provider of Web searches, of violating KinderStart's constitutional right to free speech by blocking search engine results showing Web site content and other communications.
They have the right to free speech. But here's the thing: Google is not a public forum. Google, as a seperate company, has every right to decide what they do and do not display on their webpage. Kinderstart has every right to go elsewhere and advertise their site. But last time I checked, regulating what privately-owned web pages display don't fall under the first amendment. Otherwise, you'd see a lawsuit every time a post gets deleted on (insert random popular web forum here) for breaking whatever that site's ToS is.
But, of course, it makes for better FUD when you slap a "You broke the first amendment!" sticker on companies.
On the plus side, at least Google's lawyers are getting a workout. Between the whole DoJ thing, the FTC's demand for emails, and that stupid Usenet lawsuit, they're definately earning their pay.
Tluin natha Linux xxizzuss uriu olt bwael mon'tun.
Just how much of their business came from Google in the first place!
Did you know my dad's dog died?
yes, google is a publicly held corporation and like you said that is very different from a privately held company.
if you go back and read (and put a little effort into interpretation) the grandparent, they are saying that google is in the private sector, not the public sector. this has nothing to do with whether or not they are publicly or privately held. two different things.
i'm sorry your cute attempt at a reply is off-topic.
Google promises "objectivity" in search results "finding the most relevant pages for any query." Google also claims "No other search engine ...... delivers more useful information than Google." http://www.google.com/intl/en/corporate/features.h tml Google has built its business on these promises.
How could a site be considered irrelevant and be de-listed or penalized based on something the user never sees? Few users seeking information even know that a site has hidden text, re-directs or the like.
If Google thinks that hidden text and re-directs should not have an impact on search results, maybe they should spend five minutes of coding time to filter those "hidden" portions of the web from the googlebot, rather than put the webpage into the "Google Sandbox" without notice.
Hmm?
No robots.txt. No DOCTYPE declaration. No language meta tag. Wickedly bad scripting everywhere. Effing FONT tags littered through the site. Forms inside tables. Maybe they could update their Copyright date to even 2005 if not 2006? The list just goes on... There is probably also something wrong with their directory structure which is why they don't show up at the top of the search results. Seems they're mostly a victim of crappy web work and could use a bit of SEO cleanup to say the least. Google is just enforcing standards that Yahoo and MSN don't. I guess the new American way is that when you can't do, sue.
This came up all the time in pre-web days, when newspapers or Yellow Pages neglected to run ads people had taken out. Their liability has always been limited to returning the advertising fee. I remember one case about 10 years ago, when REI Coop failed to get their ad included in Silicon Valley area Yellow Pages for two years in a row. They lost a lot business, and in fact ended up closing two of their stores in the area. REI sued, of course, but got nothing beyond a refund.
KinderStart charges that Google without warning in March 2005 penalized the site in its search rankings, sparking a "cataclysmic" 70 percent fall in its audience -- and a resulting 80 percent decline in revenue.
Do they have any actual evidence Google maliciously lowered the site's listing in search results?
Google is not necessarily directly responsible for every downgrade of a Pagerank. The system is supposed to work based on how many people choose to link to a site. Therefore, falling Pagerank is simply a symptom of falling site popularity, although this would be a circular effect (the lower you are in the results display the fewer people will click you anyway). But that's not Google's fault. It's simply that most consumers are too lazy to read all results throughly before clicking one.
Given that it's just an advertising trap, the problem could be that (gasp!) consumers have figured out this site simply has no real information, and it's falling in popularity becuase there aren't as many suckers to reel in at this point. In other words, the whole site's business model has gone through it's half-life, they're on the downward slope of their cash-cow.
"Google does not generally inform Web sites that they have been penalized nor does it explain in detail why the Web site was penalized," the lawsuit said.
So?
Who said they have to?
Google's not a public utility or branch of the government last time I checked. If you don't like where you fall in search results, market yourself, improve your site, or go home crying to mommy.
The suit was filed the same day a federal judge denied a U.S. government request that Google be ordered to hand over a sample of keywords customers use to search the Internet while requiring the company to produce some Web addresses indexed in its system.
I don't see any relation between these two events. But if the editor wanted a couple more inches of article...
Interesting side note: When I worked in dial-up tech support I got a call from a customer who had a page up in their personal webspace. The page was about childhood abuse (or maybe eduaction, I can't remember) anyway. This person was an author of a couple books and her site was in the top ten results for this topic on Google for awhile. It had recently fallen to the second page I believe. They were calling us because they somehow thought we were responsible and wanted us to put the customers page back up to the third result when searching Google for the topic of the customer's expertise. Also, the site was not coming up when clicking the page link in Google.
The reason the site didn't come up anymore was the customer had their page up on a personal webspace (so the URL was htt p://home.isp.com/~username) but the customer had set up the page before her ISP had been bought out by us. So the google search result had the old ISP's domain (and we'd stopped forwarding from that domain to ours after a few years). I had to talk with them for a very long time about how the order of results are decided on Google (even showing them the "miserable failure" googlebomb to illustrate how results can be tampered with). My recommndations in the end were to get a proper domain name for their site and try to contact google to get the exiting result's URL corrected.
If Google made it a little more clear about how Pagerank works (without disclosing all their proprietary info, just a survey of information) to the public lawsuits like this wouldn't be possible, and they would get less hatemail from political parties/celebrities taking things personally.
Perhaps you'd like to launch a lawsuit against google to get your lastname site up higher in the page ranks? There's a service to allow you to do that. Try outS oogle</a>.
Feel free to suggest improvements to the site.
Cow Cube
The service is using the search engine. Looking at g00gle, there are lots of link farming and abusively SEOed sites. The problem is their "we can do whatever we want and we don't have to tell you why" attitude. When the results are derived from the "public" and offered to the public for "free" to g00gle's ultimate benefit, not being accountable to the public just doesn't fly.
Whether Google has a duty to the sites ranked to get it right and explain itself depends on what page rank is. If it is merely opinion, basically subjective, then they have no such duty. If, on the other hand, page rank is an objective measure of visibility on the web or some such thing, then giving a site a lower rank than it deserves is effectively making a false and pejorative claim about the site and the site should be entitled to relief. The applicable law here is the law of commercial libel.
If Sergei Brin posts on his web site that he thinks McDonalds food is awful, McDonalds has no claim against him because he has merely expressed an opinion. If, on the other hand, he posts that he doesn't go to McDonalds because their food is contaminated with E. coli, he has made a factual claim and McDonalds is entitled to go after him if he has it wrong. The question is, is page rank a subjective matter of opinion or an objective claim of fact? It seems to me that it is intended to be the latter, in which case Google has a duty to stand up for it.
The point is that if you are one of a few major players profiting from a business that has become essential to the public, we'll let you enjoy your quasi-monopoly, but you'd better be available equally and evenhandedly to all. (That's easier than nationalizing such entities.) The day is coming when Google, and Microsoft too, will be regulated like public utilities. It is completely inevitable.
Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.
I have sites ranked in Google, I am glad I do. Their pageranks occasionally change altering my position - I adapt. That's my responsibility to myself and my site. I do not sue, for I have no right.
Google serves web results for the search engine users, not for the websites. Sure they connect the two, but they are trying to serve the person(s) searching - that is what they do. It is what makes them the most popular - relevant search results.
As others have mentioned, most people do not like linkfarms or referral sites, people hate even clicking a link and ending up there. I know I do too - I wanted results, not someone elses biased attempt to get the most referral revenue. (I realize Google could be viewed as similar with 'sponsored results' but at least I know that up front and can bypass or ignore them.) In the end, I use Google because Google serves me - not Kinderstart or any other web site first.
"Your free advertisement is no longer as effective as it used to be, and we demand full refun.... er.. .WE WANT SOME MONEY!"
twits.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Heaven forbid a company should become more popular than yours in the eyes of Google. I mean, if the general populace is linking to other sites more than yours, naturally your ranking is going to be lower. Moreover, how can one reasonably expect Google to send a notice to the owners of the billions of sites it indexes? It's simple black-box testing - providing such notices would allow people to figure out how PageRank works.
It sounds to me like this company is just a sore loser to competition.
You are not a very good Troll.
'It now appears that if you go to a resturant and get bad food and bad service and write that in a review of that resturant then the resturant can sue you for giving them a bad "rank" '
If you write it then the restaurant have the right to ask you what did you dislike.
Maybe the restaurant's service was suited well for the type and taste of different customers and cooker can be surprised by the way you react... It is in your best interest to give as much information as possible to the other side and it is in the best interest of the other side to take your yelling seriously and improve the service... This is how the relations and services and products improve - ballancing, it goes out of ballance? Then there is a time for corrections. Corrections can be made only if there is enough information.
Imagine that you run the restaurant and one day people stop comming in. No customers - no business. You close your restaurant and the only information you got is "you have bad review". But you don't know what was wrong, who was unsatisfied, who and how was doing the review... That is not fair, is it?
SE service is based on "reviewing" the sites by secret and unseen "Agents". You cannot see them, you cannot know what they say, you feel only the impact that can kill your business. Is it fair? You should have right to know at least the base information.
Well, I've got to get back to work. When I stop rowing, the slave ship just goes in circles.
Is no one concerned that a few dozen powerful corporations can essentially make their own law? Kinderstart deserves its de-ranking, but is it OK for Google to ask us to wonder why it does what it does, when sometimes, it may not be obvious? Some corporations rival government in their power. (Some corporations have actually swayed government, as when the Japanese zaibatsu pressured Hirohito into starting World War II.) If we ask government to be transparent and accountable to the people, why not coporations? If we are a conscientious and fair society at heart (subside, cynics), do we not deserve to see that those is power are treating us fairly? Should someone decide whether Google's "punishment" of a rule-breaking site is excessive when businesses and lives and families, including businesses not playing the "smart-aleck" like Kinderstart, are ruined for secret reasons? This may not be an easy question to resolve but we have to debate it and resolve it.
Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.
Kinderstart.com: "Now that all the blogs are talking about us, we're once again in the top 100's!. Sheeps!"
http://www.kinderstart.com:8080/kindertoday/addPos tingForm
I'm submitting this story:
http://news.com.com/2100-1032_3-1011740.html
Thanks AKAImBatman!
There's no failure quite as dissatisfying as a complete and total solution to the wrong problem.
In the melee here, has anyone actually looked at Kinderstart's Webpage?
They seem to me to be a cybersquatter-esque colection of links, with no real content. Seems to me that Google did the world a favor by deprecating their listing.
My guess is that all of their revenue was from click-throughs. Google is doing the world a favor by not putting other directories on their first page. We go to Google to get content, not link-lists.
I predict that they will lose in court, if their page is entered as evidence.
Remember, Google is about providing relevant content, to their users (people who search), and click through to their advertisers. I'm not exactly sure how Kinderstart has any standing here, unless there is an implied contract, which I strongly doubt.
It seems as though their plan worked, check out their Alexa pagerank since the lawsuit gained attention.
? &range=2y&size=large&compare_sites=&y=r&url=kinder start.com
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details
http://www.hollowdepth.com
Quite frankly, I'm not sure why VA Linux bothers paying the slashdot "janitors". They could be replaced with a 10 line perl script that monitors digg stories (and posts them 2 days later) and roland piquiepealle's blog.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
I envy your simple life. If the worst thing in your life is a bad link on a website, you either have a perfect life, or no life. Does the war in Iraq not annoy you? Does "third-world" poverty not annoy you? Is this really the most annoying thing in the world?
What a simple life. I envy your clarity of thought.
Author, Shell Scripting : Expert Re
It looks like being on the frontpage of slashdot will get you a visit from .06% of the internet even if you have *nothing* to offer (even if they only visit one or two pages).
That's interesting, I going to start looking at that for all Slashdot articles linking to nobody sites.
My list of multiplayer
"The complaint accuses Google, as the dominant provider of Web searches, of violating KinderStart's constitutional right to free speech by blocking search engine results showing Web site content and other communications"
That's bullshit! Aside from the idiocy of a 'free speech' argument in this case... just because someone has the right to say something doesn't give them a right to be heard. I'm no Constitutional scholar, but I don't think the framers put in a PageRank clause in the Bill of Rights.
I'm sure they're changing their algorithms constantly. If their rank is going down maybe they aren't as great as they think they are... hell, you can't even find Google with their search engine. That alone would indicate to me that their search engine is utter crap.
Being monopoly doesn't have to do with just being goverment created or required. A monopoly is a business that controls such a large part of a market that its actions are capable of significantly harming other businesses-- that's bad for free enterprise. Any business need that I have I should be available from several sources, all with competitive pricing. That is economically optimal.
So states require drivers to carry insurance. Doesn't society likewise require you to work and earn? What if someone, in bad faith, harms your reputation or ability to earn? Libel, slander, de-ranking? (The key, of course, is "in bad faith"-- for example, if it could be shown Google de-listed a journalist's wife's business because the journalist revealed details about the CEO he preferred be unknown.)
OK, so Google may be right in de-ranking Kinderstart. The Plaintiff is an idiot, perhaps, but the principle is far from idiotic. Do we have the right to know sometimes why Google acts as it does? If someone is hurt and it's not apparent why, that someone will surely think so. And so will anyone fair-minded.
Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.
I went to kinderstart.com like everyone else. At the top of the page is a "search engine" which consists of a search terms box and a search engine selector. The top search engine in the selector is KinderStart, which I presume searches internal content. Google is number 5. So KinderStart offers Google searching, but Google doesn't take you to KinderStart. So KinderStart sues Google. Maybe they figure that Google is It and owes them tagbacks.
Q: What did the comedian say to the crowd?
A: If I knew, this joke would be funny.
IIRC, in the US, it is not illegal to be a monopoly. It is illegal to be a monopoly and to leverage that position in entering other markets and stuff. I think predatory pricing is also illegal.
Let's say I make a new food product - a new sugar-loaded cereal called ILuvsMahSugah Puffs. One grocery store displays my new cereal at the end of their cereal aisle; a lot of people who want some cereal may encounter mine first and decide to try it while others will ignore it and go to the cereal they like - the kind for which they were searching. Another grocery store decides to put my new cereal in the aisle itself, next to the other sugary cereals using a sort of "grouped" method. Another decides to throw it in randomly amongst the other cereals in their cereal aisle. Another decides to place it in the bread aisle, away from all the other cereals so that those who go searching for some cereal may not come across mine but those who are searching for bread may accidentally stumble upon it and decide to either try it or go get some other kind of cereal. The final grocery store decides not to even carry my new cereal in their store.
Naturally, I would like to see my new cereal displayed at the end of the cereal aisle in each store, so that all of those potential customers who want cereal will see mine first and will, hopefully, try it before entering the aisle to check out the other cereals past mine.
The question is: do I have the right to sue all of those other stores for not putting my cereal at the end of their cereal aisle where I want it? More importantly, should I have the right if it is promised to me? Is it my right for all of them to explain to me why they put my cereal where they did?
This "lawsuit" filed by KinderStart.com, who I have never heard of until I read this, seems as silly to me as my horribly long, drawn-out metaphor.
I am a litigation attorney in private practice. I have to represent my clients using all legal and ethical means at my disposal consistent with my view that litigation should be a last, not first, resort to problem resolution since it is costly, aggravating, and not always the best way to resolve business disputes. Sometimes it is. A company has to make the determination that the costs associated with litigation are worth the potential rewards. It is a fundamental cost-benefit analysis in that regard. There are rare instances when there is a good guy and there is a bad guy and litigation is the only way to resolve a problem. Usually, the calculus is more complex. The lawyer(s) that drafted this complaint (which I have not seen, despite an attempt to locate it at PACER) has (have) a difficult legal theory to try to advance. I do not know what attempts at pre-litigation resolution were attempted in this case. I can imagine, however, that the attorneys for Google probably told Kinderstart's counsel to sue another deep pocket to make up for its alleged losses. Indeed, I don't think that any of Kinderstart's allegations of Google's abridgement of constitutional rights will hold water, simply on the basis that Google is not a public entity (e.g., the Police) and is not a quasi-public enterprise (e.g., utilities, which are heavily regulated at the local, state and federal levels). It therefore does not stand in the shoes of a governmental agency that is trying to curtail freedom of speech under the First Amendment to the US Constitution. What the lawyer is going to have to argue, and this is the only argument that is coherent in a constitutional sense, is that Google has become a quasi-public institution and is therefore bound by the restrictions and must offer the freedoms contained in the US and California Constitutions. To borrow an ancient Latin phrase, this dog won't hunt. Google is not quasi-public. It is in business to make money for its shareholders. Just ask the SEC and look at its corporate filings in EDGAR. The quality and quantity of Kinderstart's content (as so many others have seen fit to comment upon) is utterly irrelevant. The only relevant issue for resolving the Constitutional issue is the status of Google as a governmental or quasi-governmental entity. I saw a quote from one of the Plaintiff's lawyers who recognized this. He also undoubtedly understands that this will be an uphill fight in the District Court in San Jose. Kinderstart is seeking to fundamentally alter the basis of the use of the Internet and specifically search engines that use proprietary formulae in "ranking" (really, who appears first, based on the accepted truism that people are going to 'click' to the first relevant website they come across, to be more precise) that would then be subject to some level of constitutional scrutiny by the Courts. I cannot see any judge agreeing with this position. There are, after all other search engines that presumably would not like to see themselves stuck with Constitutional guarantees to the public. Imagine if you will what utter and further chaos the Internet (and specifically search engines such as Google, MSN, Yahoo!, AOL (owned in part by Google) and all the others) would be thrown into if they were all of a sudden responsible to the public at large if, using their calculus for rankings (pick any company's methodology) they could be held liable in damages for a fall in the rankings of ANY company they list and which is dependent upon high rankings on a particular search engine -- here, Google -- for its income. The Court would have to find some Constitutional civil right that would attach to ALL companies that Google (and other search engines presumably) ranks using its ranking formulae. The Courts would become involved in determining whether a particular company's search engine calculus is Constitutional. I think that ultimately this is what a court would have to find and do if the KinderStart.com suit is successful. My crystal ball tells me that this case will not live past a summary judgment m
see www.squishdot.org. clone built on zope
I just updated my hosts file to set 'www.kinderstart.com' to '0.0.0.0'.
only in usa... :D
What a clever way to get free traffic - they're not so stupid after all. Perhaps almost free, because filing suit must cost some money to KinderStart. I am not going to visit this site, so there!
http://www.trainsem.com/
It's the blink tag on the front page, I bet somewhere in the pagerank code you'll find:
if(page.containsTag('blink'){
rank = rank/2;
}
Sindri Traustason.
I hadn't seen brainyquote before - thanks.
Page rank is a distillation through technology of how the designers believe attributes are important.
It is their opinion, expressed in code.
If I do not like the food at a restaurant, can they sue me?
If I do not like Nike trainers (sneakers) can they sue me?
If I am allergic to nuts, can some nut sue me?
Failing that, google can google the judge and jury, find all their dirt, and black-mail them
mauhahahahahahahahahah on an evil scale that rates less than loosing the case, so it is ok.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
According to the article, "the complaint accuses Google, ... of violating KinderStart's constitutional right to free speech by blocking search engine results..." Apparently, someone needs to review their copy of the Bill of Rights. To wit, "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech."
Last time I checked, "Congress" didn't equate to "Google" and "law" didn't equate to "seach engine results."
Nothing to see here, folks. Move along.
It's called 'greymail'.
Greymail is a fairly common legal tactic. You try to force your opponent to choose between 'losing the case' and 'giving up an important secret'. In criminal cases, it tends to be used as an attempt to make the prosecutors drop a charge. In civil cases, like this one, it's usually an attempt to get the defendant to settle.
From what I can see, and what I recall of previous pageRank suits against Google, this one looks like a non-starter. Google has never promised anyone that their pageRank score will remain the same.. in fact, they pretty much guarantee that pageRank will change whenever new pages about a subject appear, old pages about a subject disappear, or the content of existing pages changes. Neither has Google ever promised, or even suggested, that their pageRank algorithms will remain stable and predictable. They're pretty open about the fact that they're constantly tuning and adjusting their system.
The plaintiff has no contractual claim against Google. They didn't pay for a Sponsored Link, and even those positions are subject to change based on what other people are willing to pay for the same keywords. Neither can the plaintiff claim that Google specifically altered their rankings to injure that company (and even then, Google has won suits against pageRank spammers who sued because Google broke their system).
When we get right down to it, we have a plaintiff that took opportunistic advantage of a good pageRank, and then suffered a reversal when the weather changed. Now they've brought a lawsuit against Google claiming specific and prejudicial injury, but they can't prove that unless they see Google's pageRank algorithm. Thus, they hope they can force Google will choose to settle rather than being forced to defend their right to keep the pageRank algorithms secret.
Like I said, it looks to me like a non-starter. Google's argument to the judge will probably run along these lines:
1 - The plaintiff doesn't have standing to sue Google on contractual grounds. The only way plaintiff can bring suit at all is to claim that Google is a public service.
2.1 - Assuming for the moment that Google is a public service, adhering to the plaintiff's concept of fairness would force Google to do one of two things: publish its pageRank algorithm, or provide sufficient notice of change that its pageRank algorithm could easily be reverse-engineered by a third party.
2.2 - If the pageRank algorithm was public knowledge, third parties (aka: spammers) would abuse it to assign pageRanks based on a client's willingness to pay, not on any standard of relevance or utility to the person doing the search.
2.3 - Allowing spammers to hijack the pageRank system would destroy the 'public service' the plaintiff claims to exist.
3 - But Google isn't a public service.
3.1 - Google never promised the plaintiff (or anyone else) a consistently high pageRank.
3.2 - Google doesn't give anyone 'warning' that their pageRank is about to change.
3.3 - The change in the client's pageRank happened for one of the following 'reasons':
3.3.1 - Someone else's pageRank got better.
3.3.2 - The plaintiff's page passed its freshness date, and the fact that new pages get a higher rank than old, unchanged pages is public knowledge.
3.3.3 - Google adjusted its pageRank algorithms to make searches even better, and this is only one of millions of resulting changes.
Google dropped our Pagerank too on March 8 here at Floridata.com. We're a plant encyclopedia, online for 10 years, don't do SEO - just create excellent, extensive reference content. Google dropped our rank last Fall too but corrected it after I pointed out anomolies with the PageRank Data. I'll show it to you - more than a year ago our IP was 216.203.152.232 (now unassigned, owned by XO Corp.) - enter site:216.203.152.232 into the google search box and you will see 997 entries for Floridata.com pages. All with broken links. Google Support suggested they be removed but not until they generate "true 404" errors (which they're not doing now because there is no WEb server at that address). here's the search: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3A216.20 3.152.232&btnG=Google+Search
So all other arguments aside, PageRAnk contains corrupted data records that are likely to be one of the causes that our referral dropped 70% overnight.
Now watch Pagerank in action - when we search on the common name for a type of oak tree, the first link that it brings up is one of the corrupted links in your database:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=floridata +swamp+chestnut+oak&btnG=Search
I'm working on a series of demonstrations that illustrate what a disgraceful job PageRank is doing finding relavant content for this kind of data. In side-by-side comparisons with the other engines - the search term "swamp chestnut oak" brings up links to Floridata's plant profile for that tree within the first 3 pages of results on each of the other search engines. On Google there's no sign of our profile within the first 12 pages (just look at the rubbish that PageRank results puts ahead of us).
it's defective (if for no other reason that your including broken links in results - and NO THEY DON'T GO AWAY)?
I'm amazed at home many uninformed individuals are so quick to defend a big impersonal corporation like Google and be totally unsympathetic (even vicious) at small publishers who are just trying to make a living. I've had jackasses on these boards accuse me of all sorts of deviances - people who know nothing aobut me or the situation - but they sure do seem to be sweet on Google...
All I do is write about plants and take pictures of plants and Google is destroying me. BTW this would NOT be a problem if Google didn't have 80% of the search market (at least coming into my site)