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Google Antitrust Suit May Go Forward
TechForensics writes "KinderStart, whose page hits and AdSense revenue dropped sharply after changes by Google demoted its appearance in search results, brought suit claiming the search engine effectively suppressed its first amendment rights by lowering the site's visibility. While the Court rejected that argument out-of-hand, it appeared more amenable to KinderStart's argument that since it was a search page, Google's suppression of a rival search engine is prohibited by antitrust laws. The suit may go forward with the judge's commentary."
See no results, hear no complaints.
I think that this whole case is a load of shit. Honestly, I think Google has the fairest ranking system for it's results, compared to MSN or Yahoo! especially. The only reason "KinderStart's" 'ranking' would be decreased, is if less sites linked to it. Well, is their engine really 'all that' if so many less sites linked to them this month, that their Google PageRank value decreased?
NO~, I read Slashdot because I think it's stupid.....
might be dependent upon whether or not Google treated this outfit any differently than the hundreds of millions of other sites out there. If Google changed the rules but applied them to everyone, this is just a case of sour grapes. If Google deliberately shafted what I'm loosely terming "competition" I suppose it would be different, but it sounds like KinderStart just wants to get their rankings back to where they would like them to be and want the court to force Google to do it. I dunno ... like somebody else mentioned the last time this story appeared on Slashdot, if your business model is entirely dependent upon Pagerank then you're putting all your eggs into one very capricious basket.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I wouldn't be worried -- it won't go very far. Too many people like Google, and that actually matters. Less importantly, it's a silly lawsuit.
At the same time, I wouldn't consider Google stock a good bet. They make all their real money through advertising, of which some significant fraction is fraud. They are desperately groping around for some other way to make money, but none has shown up yet, despite their having snapped up every bright mind in the tech industry for the last couple years. Google knows as well as anybody that as soon as they start trying to make money by charging for all their free services, there will be an instant public relations backlash. There is nothing that the public hates more than having to pay for something that used to be free. When Google starts cashing in on everything they've built, they a) still won't make more money from it than from search, which is probably tapped out, and b) they will become more hated than AOL.
Was this a deliberate act or can they just not accept that they have less importance in the eyes of the google web crawler/indexer. I believe google uses a "vote" system where every link counts as a vote... as far as I am aware no human is directly involved with this so unless google was being malicious the case should have no grounds.
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
While the Court rejected that argument out-of-hand, it appeared more amenable to KinderStart's argument that since it was a search page, Google's suppression of a rival search engine is prohibited by antitrust laws.
What's next, forcing Wendy's and Burger King to put McDonald's advertising placards in their restaurants?
What sort of search engine relies on someone searching for it on Google? Am I missing something? Do people go to google, search for 'search engine', find one, and use that to search?
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
It looks like KinderStart's primary content is a web directory. That's all that Google would spider. Web directories generally rank very poorly on Google. Google's indexing is written to take into account that when a person is searching for something they generally don't want to be sent to a directory. People want to go directly to the info they're really searching for. And if other highly ranked sights are taking about KinderStart then they'll rank higher in Google's search results for the name. So I don't see this as Google doing anything wrong.
Developers: We can use your help.
This is only mostly true. If google is using their market dominance of the search engine market in an attempt to surpress the rise of any other search engine, then they are doing something wrong. And if they actually have over 80% of the search engine market, it is likely even illegal. Using your monopoly position to maintain your monopoly is illegal, and it should be illegal. It's an anti-free market situation.
I really doubt google is doing this, and it will be hard to prove if they are. But it is a question that's worthy of paying attention to, whereas the first ammendment argument is clearly completely bogus on a whole number of grounds, the least of which is the google is a private enterprise and has no responsibility to uphold the fist ammendment.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
I'm sick of typing in "yahoo" and "MSN" and not seeing the search portals. It's such a terrible anti-competition practice. *tries it* Oh, wait. They are the first results. In that case, Google must consider this niche search engine to be a bigger threat then MSN and Yahoo!. Who would have thought? And on a side note, KinderStart now comes up as #4 in an article pertaining to the lawsuit.
In undeveloped countries, the consumer controls the market. In capitalist America, the market controls you.
In the market for online products and services, Google provides shelf space by returning links to the sellers (of such products and services) in the Google web page of search results. The analogy between shelf space at Google and shelf space at Safeway is quite strong, and anti-trust laws apply in both cases.
How does Kinderstart fit into this picture? Well, first, consider the case of shelf space at Safeway. Kroger is a direct competitor of Safeway. Both Safeway and Kroger produce their own in-house-branded versions of many foods. For example, Kroger sells Kroger-branded frozen vegetables, and Safeway also sells Safeway-branded frozen vegetables. Should Safeway be expected to give shelf space to Kroger-branded frozen vegetables? Can Kroger's president claim anti-trust violations if Safeway refuses shelf space to Kroger. The answer is "no". Kroger and Safeway are direct competitors, and Safeway cannot be expected to help a direct competitor.
As for Kinderstart, it is a direct competitor of Google. Google is a general search engine that handles all searches in the known universe. Kinderstart deals with only a subset (of that universe): search results dealing with only parenting. Since Google and Kinderstart are direct competitors, we cannot expect Google to help a direct competitor. Google's management is well within its right to even remove Kinderstart from all of Google's search results (i.e. Google's shelf space).
By the way, Google now owns more than 60% of the market for search queries, and Google's marketshare is growing. Google has now entered monopoly territory, and we must keep a watchful eye over Google. Google is fully capable of evil (like catering to Beijing in censoring search results). However, in this particular case involving Kinderstart, Google has not done any evil -- yet.
For some reason I don't see a monopolistic company allowing themselves to drop down to 4th or 5th in their own results.
Anyone care to guess who the top result in Yahoo and MSN are?