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?

Comments

Well, they are spammed with traffic now...

[NeonRonin]

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.

Re:Well, they are spammed with traffic now...

[Uber Banker]

For the lazy, the link to the website whose design truely sucks.

If I wanted to find some information on what they do it would be tough navigating through that. Good website design skills: provide information as quickly as possible, seem to have been misplaced.

But they don't really do anything, other than linking other sites. They're a link site, plain and simple. Probably harvesting click through revenue and add little value to the internet. And on a wild guess here, since a year ago, using the same search parameters, I have had many less 'link sites' coming up in Google searches which I see as only a good thing. Ironically they may well find the sites they link to through Google.

Re:Well, they are spammed with traffic now...

[tomhudson]

... and Kinderstart sues slashdot a week later ...

"We have a right to know how stories get to the front page on slashdot. Why aren't we getting the benefit of dupe stories like everyone else?

In retaliation, slashdot "mis-links" a "story" mis-titled "SCO Files for Bankruptcy" to Kinderstart and Kinderstarts' resultant server bandwidth overcharges put them out of business.

Re:Well, they are spammed with traffic now...

[Pizaz]

SAN FRANCISCO, March 21 (Reuters Future News Service) - A parental advice Internet site Kinderstart.com has sued Open Source Technolgoy Group (OSTG) owners of the popular internet news site Slashdot.org, charging it unfairly deprived the company of customers by not perptually running stories about it. An attorney at the law firm of Slippe, Falle & Sioux whom are representing Kinderstart.com commented that "It's unfair to give that kind of free publicity one day, and then take it away the next. Frankly, any company with that much power make's me salivate."

Re:Well, they are spammed with traffic now...

[tomhudson]

Anyone else find it funny they're running Google Ads? THAT's why they're pissed off ... 80% decline in ad revenue from google.

Re:Well, they are spammed with traffic now...

[hazem]

But they don't really do anything, other than linking other sites.

It looks like one of those sites you get when you mispell the name of a website and you end up with some random search. If I hadn't gone there from slashdot, I would have quickly hit the back button for fear of spyware.

Re:Well, they are spammed with traffic now...

[ArsenneLupin]

If I hadn't gone there from slashdot, I would have quickly hit the back button for fear of spyware.

Slashdot as a garantor of website safety? Wow, this is a new one!

So when Slashdot links to you-know-where, you won't quickly hit the back button for fear of irreparable eye damage, because, well, it was linked from Slashdot?

sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

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?"

Re:fp

[BoomerSooner]

How so? What does a private company owe someone who simply wants to be ranked high?

If they want to be shown they should pay for advertising. My lastname.com is on page 3 if I search for mylastname. So should I sue google? Maybe I should "advertise" since that is how they exist.

I hate bullshit like this, if you base your business model on a high google ranking you should do what others are to maintain it. Salma Hayek pics are hard to find since those site purveyors have the first 1000 links or so going to some scam *nude stars* sites. lol... maybe that is what i wanted after all ;)

it's...

[davids_xls]

those pigeons, sue them!!!

So which is it...

[$1uck]

From TFA:
"aggressively defends the secrecy of its patented search ranking system"
Is it patented or secret? I mean it can't be both.

Re:So which is it...

[sydneyfong]

It's likely that the patent covers the general pagerank algorithm (or even just the idea of ranking sites based on how many other sites link to them, and their respective ranks, etc), without the actual parameters or tweaks (eg. if you have been linked from warez sites you take a penalty). It's very likely that Google tweaks the ranking system from time to time, or even rewrites the code for it (who knows? ;-) and those tweaks won't show up in the (original) pagerank patent.

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer.

They are just a search engine?

[LiquidCoooled]

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)

Uh... Google can do whatever it wants...

[dteichman2]

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.

Re:Uh... Google can do whatever it wants...

[Baseball_Fan]

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.

I agree. If the courts say there must be a "fair" system to decide pagerank, then who decides? Do we want Google and Yahoo to return the same results?

If one of the search engines does not work, then don't use it. That's why I don't use google very often anymore. If I want to search for homes in an area, I don't get real estate offices in that area, I get too many pages of fake-mls pages that just want to advertise a different site. What good is it getting 1000 results, with the 10 or 20 good ones burried?

Googles pagerank algorithm does not work, I don't think any algorithm can work. It is too easy to manipulate. What we will need is a open source project, with people adding websites to an index. Maybe that will work, maybe it wont like Amazon where a few people can spam the scoring system.

Perhaps the real problem is the growth in the internet. Before google, even before yahoo, when I was using webcrawler, I would get very good search results. Most came from universities or private websites from people interested in their hobby or topic. Today, the best websites I find come by word of mouth, a friend saying check this out.

Re:fp

[$1uck]

"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 is a bullshit suit. I'm sorry you don't have a constitutional right to have your message/voice broadcast/printed/served/displayed by others.

Why?

[Parham]

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.

Re:fp

[nkh]

And Microsoft won't say how their operating system works, I'll sue Bill Gates and demand the source code. Anyway, KinderStart seems to be another linkfarm, that's why they are ranked so low.

You reap what you sow

[pariahdecss]

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

Re:You reap what you sow

[dubl-u]

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

I was curious to see, so I went to archive.org and looked for stuff like that. I couldn't find any. Would you mind digging up a link or two?

Give me a break

[brunes69]

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.

Re:Give me a break

[PlayCleverFully]

Now first of all I would like to preface this by saying that I basically agree with you. Google should not be forced to recommend certain sites if it chooses not to, and indeed if it was Google would become useless.

However, I find it ironic that when Google is involved, Slashdotters seem to subscribe to the "private companies should be allowed to do as they please" ideology, but when say Microsoft is involved, Slashdotters everywhere scream "MONOPOLY! DOWN WITH CORPORATE AMERICA!" and the like. Microsoft CANNOT legally break compatibility with competing software vendors' products, for example making Firefox not work on Windows because it competes with Internet Explorer, or making OpenOffice not work because it competes with MS Office. This is ILLEGAL and the fact that it is illegal is a good thing, I think we all agree.

Likewise, IF Google is determined to have a monopoly on the search engine market, some restrictions should be placed on how they index pages on their site. Now some will say that "no one is forcing you to use Google" but likewise no one is forcing you to use MS products. However, 95% of people do whether or not they are forced and Google can have a monopoly even though other search engines exist. For example, if Google suddenly decided to require companies pay for their page ranking, many lawsuits would follow, justifiable lawsuits, in my opinion.

All I'm saying is that private companies CANNOT do whatever they want just because they are private. There are some restrictions. I will admit that this is a losing if not a frivolous lawsuit, but simply because it is Google instead of MS does not make the suit evil.

Re:Give me a break

[Daniel Dvorkin]

All I'm saying is that private companies CANNOT do whatever they want just because they are private.

In principle, of course, you're absolutely right -- but the difference is that Microsoft broke the law (and mostly got away with it, grumblings on /. notwithstanding) while Google didn't. There is simply no comparison between Google's behavior as the leading search engine and Microsoft's behavior as the leading OS provider. Google does what successful business are supposed to do: offer a good, popular product or service which people choose to use based on its merits.

Whether Google actually constitutes a search engine monopoly is an interesting question; given Yahoo's position as a pretty strong number two, I'm inclined to say not, but it might be worthy of a court test one of these days. I really doubt Kinderstart are going to be the ones to make this happen, though.

Merely a First Measure

[hunterx11]

If this lawsuit fails, they plan to sue everyone who isn't one of their customers for depriving them of revenue.

Re:fp

[wass]

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.

If Google opened its pagerank, then the order of search results would be the cleverness of the webmasters to craft their webpage to exploit Google's methods, instead of actual relevence to the search involved. You'd prefer that situation? Google would effectively denigrate into a giant billboard, and you'd then have to search through dozens of useless 'advertising' false links to get to the information you really want.

traffic

[mrowton]

you can see how their traffic started falling here

Re:traffic

[fastgood]

you can see how their traffic started falling here [Alexa]

Advertising-101 will tell you that heavy promotion merely compresses the timeframe for adoption and repeat business.
If the product stinks, it will flame out in under a year rather than die a slow product cycle death. They lost core visitors here.

Re:fp

[sam_handelman]

There is none whatsoever.
  If I say "I recommend these sites: " and then I remove one from my list, am I obliged to *explain* myself?
  I am not, no more than anyone is obliged to listen to me.
  In general, I think corporations *should* be answerable for the broader consequences of their business motivated decisions (even though, as a matter of law, they generally are not). However, in this case, that is absolute hogwash.
  They should be free to make whatever recommendations they want. If they are good recommendations, people will tend to listen to them.
  I am not concerned with the intrinsic rights of Google to do page rank however they want. I am concerned with the intrinsic rights of individuals to get whatever page rank google decides to give them - if they decide that what they want is google's page rank. They are not answerable to anyone about what information they choose to provide, or why - in the same way that the New York Times is not.

Re:fp

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm always disappointed when somebody refers to the right to free speech without knowing what it really means...

Congress shall make no law ... restricting free speech ... (from memory, may be inaccurate).

The Bill of Rights only restricts the government. It has no influence on any other entity.

Re:Whats next?

[LiquidCoooled]

Priceless quote from their press releases (this one is quite old, 2001 infact)

So, you see, all dot coms are not dot bombs!

Well, I think their time has come.

Tick, Tock. Tick, Tock.

Incidentally, even archive.org has stopped wasting space on them (last index march 2005)

Re:fp

[AKAImBatman]

They are suing because Google wont say why it ranks some sites hight and bans other sites.

SearchKing sued Google over the same thing a couple of years ago, and lost the suit. The judge's comment was:

The court simply finds there is no conceivable way to prove that the relative significance assigned to a given Web site is false.

KinderStart will lose. Case closed.

Re:fp

[Daniel Dvorkin]

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.

Google chooses not to reveal its pagerank algorithms precisely to prevent the kind of link-bombing in which Kinderstart was almost certainly engaged. And why should they? This is one of the few cases where "security through obscurity" kinda works -- unlike with, say, encryption algorithms, which depend for security on a secret number, and which generally get stronger when they're open for public scrutiny, the security of Google's page rankings depends on the secrecy of the algorithm itself. They have no obligation to reveal their algorithm to Kinderstart or anyone else.

Now, as a generally pro-F/OSS guy, I personally think it would be great if Google came up with "public key pagerank" -- i.e., a pagerank algorithm that could be released as open source without compromising its effectiveness for a specific application -- but apparently that hasn't happened yet.

If anyone has a case here, it's Google; they could sue Kinderstart and everyone else who tries to manipulate the rankings, and probably under the DMCA they could press criminal charges as well. They don't, for two reasons: it would interfere with the warm'n'fuzzy "don't be evil" vibe they're still trying to project, and it would be a waste of time and money, in that they'd probably spend a lot more trying to track down the thousands (tens of thousands? hundreds of thousands? millions?) of sites that try to do this crap than they would collect in damages. But personally I hope they turn around and grind Kinderstart.com into the dust.

BTW, the first search result that comes up on Google when you search for "Kinderstart" now is this, which seems like a legitimate business rather than a badly designed wannabe portal. How is this a bad thing?

Re:fp

[mrowton]

I'm not saying realease the algorithms they use, just reply to an e-mail and say "You have been banned from google search because you have violated our guidelines (insert vague reasons here)"

"Google does not generally inform Web sites that they have been penalized nor does it explain in detail why the Web site was penalized,"

Sometimes they do and sometimes then dont

whinny babies

[mrshowtime]

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.

I don't think they have a leg to stand on

[Mister Transistor]

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.

Isnt it their page?

[PhreakOfTime]

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.

Free services becoming core infrastructure

[noidentity]

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.

In other news...

[babbling]

I'm suing Kinderstart for not linking to me.

A little of both

[jfengel]

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.

Google should help them out...

[IamGarageGuy 2]

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.

They seem to have articles too

[markov_chain]

http://www.kinderstart.com:8080/kindertoday/114264 8153

The funny thing is, it looks like they are using slash!

Re:They seem to have articles too

[Bogtha]

No, they aren't running Slash, they are running Squishdot, which is a Slash clone built on top of Zope.

Re:They seem to have articles too

[jallen02]

Apple essentially ripped the content of the beige boxes and stuffed it into a Mac.. so what is the difference? ;-)

Shoot Your Lawyer

[Detritus]

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.

Re:Shoot Your Lawyer

[sicktime]

Absolutely, Google cannot possibly violate their right to free speech even if they tried! They winge about their business being affected, then they should spend a bit more on Google AdWords! This is ridiculous and a waste of valuable court time. Google are under no obligation to list them at all, let alone to list them at the top. Businesses who rely solely on high Google rankings are on dodgy ground and they have learnt that the hard way. Ian (J.D.)

This site deserves it

[NightHwk1]

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.

Re:This site deserves it

[YoYoY]

Funnily enough http://www.kinderstart.co.uk/seems to be a valid site promoting a chain of nursery schools in the UK. It comes at the very top of google.co.uk's list when you search for "kinderstart". Google just seem to have downranked the US site because it's a junk link, providing no-one with any useful information, which is exactly what they should have done! Hope the suit gets thrown out and the judge orders them to pay Google's costs.

PageRank

[deblau]

Read U.S. Pat. No. 6,526,440. Seriously, it's quite informative.

And in further news...

[dpbsmith]

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.

Re:fp

[zuluechopapa]

aren't we kinda there already? I can't count the number of seemingly good links I've followed from google that end up sticking me on a stupid Ad page with zero content and most of it's links broken.

Human index isn't the solution

[RibRdb]

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.

Re:fp

[1shoonya0]

It is ironic and funny to think that this news is getting kinderstart.com slashdotted right now.

In Other News...

[siwelwerd]

I'm suing the moderators for depriving me of my right to free speech by not modding this comment up, without reason or warning!

Google can't do whatever it wants

[Infonaut]

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.

Mod Me Up!

[Comatose51]

Didn't RTFA, and this is probably redundant and trolling, but you best mod me up or I'll sue!

Try the 'in-your-shoes' test

[NigelJohnstone]

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.

Re:Try the 'in-your-shoes' test

[Mistlefoot]

Google is a competitor is it not? If you visit http://www.kinderstart.com you will see that it offers itself as a search engine.

I think Google should sue them though. If I type "google" into their search engine all I get is:

Home : Search Results
__________________________________________________ __________
Results for 'google' (0 matches found).

Page 1 of 1

Re:fp

[tinkertim]

Looks like a human being (at google) checked the site. I just did too, and found absolutely no meaningful content on it whatsoever. In fact, every link I clicked took me to some place where I could spend money, thus compensating kinderstart for the referral.

This is known as a "clicktrap" and (imho) is the most annoying thing in the world to happen upon.

People use Google because your chances of finding what you want, quickly are good. I.e. being taken directly to the "end of the line" , either right to a store itself, or to an article, or something else related to your search. Not to one of the stupid internet polluting man in the middle wastes of disk space.

You can go to a site like shitlance and pay someone from India a few hundred bucks to arrange hundreds of lasting (and good) backlinks. Search that site for "SEO" and you'll see what I mean.

Off my soapbox :)

Even traded companies are still private

[rkcallaghan]

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

Re:mod parent up

[friedmud]

Why does this keep coming up in this discussion?

Microsoft = MONOPOLY
Google = _not_ a monopoly

These are two completely different situations. Microsoft has legal restrictions put upon it becuase of it's position in the market (a Monopoly). They are _forced_ by law to play nice with others, because they have so much power.

Google isn't in this position (yet!). There are still several _large_ competitors (Yahoo and MSN) and Google is no where near a monopoly. Because of this they don't have any legal restrictions... they can do as they like because natural market forces will keep them in check (if Kinderstart.com is something people want to find... and they can't get it on Google... they will move to Yahoo or MSN... thus depriving Google of a customer). If those natural market forces ever go away in the search sector (as in Yahoo and MSN completely tank) _then_ Google will have to play nice with others as they will have a monopoly on how people retrieve information on the web...

PLEASE quit comparing Google to Microsoft. Just because a lot of people around here use them _doens't_ mean they are a Monopoly....

Friedmud

Publicity stunt

[wile_e_wonka]

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!

Re:fp

[Glonoinha]

After that comment I had to go look.
Here it was I thought they were producing something, or selling something (hence the terms 'customers' and 'revenue').
Nope. Just a big-ass referral site, sucking down affiliate fees for driving real customers to real sites that sell real stuff.

Now I understand why Google k-lined them.

Re:fp

[70Bang]

What does a private company owe someone who simply wants to be ranked high?

Um, Google is a public company.

However, public or private, Google isn't required to reveal their methods as those methods could qualify as a trade secret. If you try to haul Coke into court and demand they hand over their formulae, what do you think would happen? (besides the judge giggling, snickering, and laughing as though they are wearing feathered underwear under their black robe.

If they don't like the way they're ranked, they have several choices: (a) pound sand, (b) rely upon other search services, (c) take a timeout in the corner, (d) hire a spammed service which promises to put them in the top 100.[1] And in fact, this last item may be why they're acting like their tail is being twisted: they hired someone to rank it, it either failed or was short-liived, and the service they hired said it was Google's fault. I could accept option (d) without too much arm-twisting. "Hey, we did our part. Google screwed you over."

They're mad because they've got a Field of Dreams problem. Everyone thinks they have the next perpetual machine and they'll have to reinforce their doors because people will be knocking them down. No one shows up, no one cares, and after a good crying jag, they figure someone's going to pay for it. After all, they did their part correctly so someone else screwed up.

I've got some advice for them handed down many, many years ago: "No matter how good a product is, the market can be cruel & harsh." If they self-publish a book, are they going to sue the various chains because they won't put it on the shelves? And if the book manages to get onto the various shelves and it doesn't sell, are they going to sue the bookstores?

[1] I still snicker at the logic of placement spam: "Guaranteed to make your site ranked in the top 100 of the following search engines:..." Even if they manage to accomplish this, they don't tell you how long you'll remain there. Simply put: if 1'000 people respond to this ad for a single blast of spam (and the service is legitimate in its efforts), how can all of them be guaranteed top 100 placement? Then look at how many people are spamming this service. For some reason, this logic escapes many who believe themselves to be intelligent.


The bottom line? After the judge stops laughing, it should be dismissed via summary judgement, demand gorilla glue to be liberally applied to each person's head, then lodge it into their tucus.

Re:fp

[Pieroxy]

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"

That has always been true. You can sue anyone for anything.

Now, if they win, on the other hand...

--
Krazy Kat

First Amendment?

[Matilda the Hun]

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.

Boo Hoo!

[SeaFox]

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.

Re:fp

[lasindi]

If Google opened its pagerank, then the order of search results would be the cleverness of the webmasters to craft their webpage to exploit Google's methods, instead of actual relevence to the search involved. You'd prefer that situation?

You are effectively saying that Google is better because it uses security by obscurity. I know lots of Slashdotters, especially supporters of FOSS, believe that relying on security by obscurity is silly and pointless. I'd just like to hear what those people think of how Google handles its own code.

The Lawsuit is Well-Grounded

[TechForensics]

As a lawyer, I have a different take on this suit. It's not "bullshit" at all. Google has taken such a central role in our economy (to its enormous profit) that many principles of law impose on it the duty to behave evenhandedly and in good faith. (One of the oldest principles in the English common law, on which our legal system is based, is assumpsit, which holds that if one undertakes to do (or assume) a thing, he is charged with the duty to do it properly according to its importance and chance of harm to others. Google has become like a public utility.... when Ma Bell was in that category, it was not permitted to deny service to customers with poor payment histories. The Public Utilities Commission (or equivalent) put regulations or tariffs in place saying all they could do was ask for a reasonable deposit not to exceed a small multiple of the expected monthly bill. Auto insurance companies can't refuse to insure even awful drivers: states force companies, at random, to accept "assigned risks" by insuring bad drivers assigned to them through a state program.

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.

Re:The Lawsuit is Well-Grounded

[jcr]

As a lawyer, I have a different take on this suit. It's not "bullshit" at all.

No, counselor: it is bullshit. Your analogy of Ma Bell is irrelevant, since Bell was a government-created monopoly. Your analogy to insurance companies is even more of a stretch, since states require drivers to carry insurance. Google's not the only search engine, it just happens to be the leader in the field because most people who use it think it works better than the others.

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.

LET you? Go to hell!

-jcr

Re:The Lawsuit is Well-Grounded

[code65536]

There is one big problem to your analogies.

Utilities are natural monopolies. Telecoms are natural monopolies. Windows represents a natural monopoly.

Google is not a natural monopoly. First, it is not a monopoly at all. Yahoo! and MSN will be pretty miffed at the notion that Google controls the market--sure they are the top dog, but they don't control it. Second, unlike the cases mentioned above, there is relatively free entry in the search engine market. Just ask Google. They entered search very late in the game, at a time when AltaVista dominated, and spent no money on marketing for the first several years. Despite that, they went from zilch to king. You can't say this about utilities because of the sort of infrastructure costs involved and because of the inefficiency of multiple water/gas/etc. companies serving the same area. And until there is a Windows clone (like AMD is an Intel clone) that can run Windows software, Windows is also a natural monopoly. If Google become evil incarnate, I can assure you that the market will correct the problem by handing someone else the crown faster than the government can say "Congressional committee". Just ask how the folks at Overture are doing these days...

Governments do NOT have *any* mandate to regulate monopolies on a whim. Their mandate extends to natural monopolies and to cases of abuse, such as anti-competitive behavior. Until that can be shown, there is no basis whatsoever.

Also, geeks tend to lean towards libertarianism; please do not mistake libertarian for Republican.

They're using SlashCode!

[Chris Snook]

http://www.kinderstart.com:8080/kindertoday/addPos tingForm

I'm submitting this story:

http://news.com.com/2100-1032_3-1011740.html

Thanks AKAImBatman!

Kinderstart is a typical links-only page

[ZWithaPGGB]

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.

Re:Worst thing?

[tinkertim]

>> I envy your simple life.

That's bad for your blood pressure.

>> Does the war in Iraq not annoy you?

Referring to war as 'annoying' is glib and tasteless.

>> Does "third-world" poverty not annoy you?

I live in the third world (I'm an American living in the Philippines). Yes, actually it does. However the topic was not about third world poverty.

>> Is this really the most annoying thing in the world?

No, its not. You have a point and I'll happily rephrase my post.

"Click traps are one of the most annoying things one can find while using a search engine, in my opinion."

I'm very sorry that my rather quick (and late night reply) bothered you so. So I will set an ego-less example (In accordance with my simple life) and hope that you see the value of it :)

>> What a simple life. I envy your clarity of thought.

Envy only leads to emotional distress (that blood pressure thing ....) So does ego.

But I also don't recommend dwelling on war and poverty either. Perhaps you could Google Buddhism , but beware the clicktraps ;)

Hope you have a better day :)

Page rank is opinion. Freedom of speech

[tod_miller]

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.