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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."
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.
The site tried to claim before that they were a content site and that google unfairly removed them from the results.
However it appeared to everyone with eyes that this site was just a crappy linkfarm/google optimising pile of crap with no reasonable content of its own (it did however appear to use a derivative of slashcode for some of its pages).
Now they are crying that they were a search engine, they are just tosspots crying because google stopped their shit (it was all removed when google refreshed their rules about valid sites and removed thousands of crap from their results).
liqbase
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
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.
Except that Kinderstart and Google are not in the same market. Kinderstart is, despite them trying to confuse the issue, a directory, not a search engine. What's more, they are a very focused directory. There is no way in hell they can even vaguely compete with Google.
And here's a fun link. Search Google for 'kids'. What's the topmost result? Yahoo!'s Web Guide for kids.
Oh, yeah, Google's really trying to corner that market. They not only don't even have a directory for children, but point people looking for one of those at a very big competitor to their actual business, general search.
That's like, the exact opposite of abusing your monopoly position. Someone comes into a hamburger place (google) and wants some ice cream (Kid friendly stuff), and you don't have any, you direct them to a directly competing hamburger place (yahoo) that has ice cream (Their kid directory), instead of just an ice cream place (kinderstart), in the hopes they'll come back to you for the hamburgers.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?