Google PageRank Suit Dismissed

idobi writes to mention a C|Net article covering the dismissal of the Google page ranking case. Despite the loss, KinderStart also saw the ruling as a victory. The judge left the door open for a refiling, and the company is seeking to bring the suit to class-action status. Assistant professor of law at Marquette University Law School Eric Goldman comments in the article: "Frankly, there are very few novel or surprising aspects of this ruling. For example, the judge rejected the claim that Google was a state actor, but this ruling is entirely consistent with the dozen or so precedents involving private Internet companies ... The other rulings seemed very sensible and fairly predictable from the complaint. It's pretty clear that the judge thinks that some of KinderStart's claims have no chance even with repleading, but the judge apparently has decided to give KinderStart that chance rather than just shutting the door."

Comments

Re:"You suck", says google

[GigsVT]

The judge says he's open to the idea that if Google manually changed the pagerank to zero, then maybe it's defamation, which is a valid reason to bring a suit.

It would be kind of nice if that argument worked.

If that precedent is set, smear campaign people like SPEWS that regularly report non-spammers as spammers for political ends could be slapped down.

Personally, I'm sick of being called a spammer just because of my choice in ISP. It hasn't caused any problems because no sane sysadmin would actually block based on SPEWS, but just the fact that they are spreading such misinformation about thousands of legitimate companies bothers me.