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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."
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.''
And never mind that Google, being a private enterprise, can present its results any way it wants (assuming that the claims are accurate), so that there's no grounds for a lawsuit. This whole incident smells frivolous.
...but is it art?
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?
If Google suppressed other search engines, they might have a point. But Google aren't suppressing other search engines, they simply aren't choosing to promote this particular one. The website still exists.
To use an analogy that people might be more familiar with, this isn't like when Netscape complained Microsoft included Internet Explorer with Windows, this would be like if Netscape demanded that Microsoft included Netscape Navigator with Windows.
And the whole idea that Google are doing this purposefully to kill other search engines is ludicrous, given that Google list plenty of real competitors when you search for "search engine". But somehow this tiny search engine nobody has heard of is worse competition than MSN, etc?
They actually claim that their First Amendment rights are being infringed. For those of you completely unfamiliar with the USA constitution, as their attorney apparently is, the First Amendment says:
Last time I checked, Google not including KinderStart in their index is substantially different from Congress making a law.
Remember: freedom of speech is not the freedom to force your speech on others.
KinderStart are either kooks or publicity-whoring barratry artists, the SCO of search engines.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
-William Brendel
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.
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.
Irrelevance does not equal suppression of first amendment rights. If it did, then I would have been gagged years ago.
..and if you search for "search engine" the top 3 are dogpile, altavista, and metasearch. google.co.uk is fourth.
"Hello Paypal this is google. Can you please put a link to our payment system?"
"What? No. Fuck off".
"But, we have a link to yours!"
"Huh? Ok. Fuck off".
"Maybe we'll take out all references to Paypal if you won't reciprocate"
"We'll sue. Fuck off".
"So, that's a no?"
Once you let judges have a say in how and what Google has in it's index you open a real can of worms and how hard would it be for some very good attorney and some very bad judge to decide that indeed the nature of the web is cooperation and reciprocal links and Google should have a link to it from paypal OR the Goog gets to take out Paypal if they won't reciprocate.
Stupidist lawsuit. Ever.
Need Mercedes parts ?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
This sort of litigation is the cause of so many injustices. While we waste our time smacking down these stupid cases all sorts of money/time/attention is drawn away from more important issues. I mean, there are real and serious things to be debated and decided by those who work for and with our justice department, but we spend all our time arguing about something that doesn't particularily make sense at all. Since when does google HAVE to do anything? People have a choice in using their system or not; they are not a monopoly. (Isn't MSN the most used search engine still?)
I think that the antitrust argument can be easily refuted by searching for "search engine" on Google. If Google were really manipulating the results (and maybe even if it weren't), you'd expect "Google" to be the first result returned.
But it's not.
In fact, the first three are: Dogpile, AltaVista, and MetaCrawler. The next 10 are: Google UK, Google, MSN, Yahoo, Netscape, HotBot, FreeFind, Lycos, Mamma, and Vivisimo.
So, if they were manipulating results, wouldn't that be an obvious place to start?
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?
The correct phrase is don't be evil. Check Google's site yourself. It is surprising how many people can get a simple phrase like this incorrect.
Plan 9 from Bell Labs.
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