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Lawsuit Against Google Dismissed
Weather Storm writes in with news from PCWorld that a US District Court judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed against Google by a company that accused them of manipulating search results for political and religious reasons and skewing results in favor of companies that compensate Google financially. The lawsuit (discussed on Slashdot last year) was filed by KinderStart, a parenting information Web site that claims it was illegally blocked from Google search results. The judge not only dismissed the lawsuit but granted a motion by Google to sanction KinderStart and one of its lawyers. Google can now seek "reasonable compensation" for attorney fees because KinderStart's lawyer filed claims that were factually baseless and did not perform an adequate investigation before filing the lawsuit.
So KinderStart's case was dismissed because they didn't have any evidence? All well and good, but I would've preferred a ruling that said even if they could substantiate their claims, that they were not entitled to any damages.
I mean, so what if Google skews their search results? They aren't under any obligation to link to the whole web or to do so in an objective manner.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
Skewing coverage and results? Imagine if the US News Media had to abide by such rules -- we wouldnt have 24hr coverage of the latest girl being kidnapped. Perhaps we could actually get news on world events, aside from that "World in 30 seconds" segment.
I'd like to see the same thing happen to the RIAA next.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I RTFA'd, and checking out KinderStart.com I noticed that KinderStart is just a search engine *for kids*, meaning that they remove things that they believe are not 'ok' for children to see...
...and their bitching about Google skewing their search results?
Fuck. Can I sue them for removing search results?
Judges are starting to make sense and get onto companies for being legal morons.... Where are they comming from and what are they putting in the water in that city?
You never realize how much manually made unmanaged "linked" lists suck, till you have src.link.link.link.link...
Why people feel that Google is obligated to do anything with their search results. They have the right to censor their search results however they like - their search results do not affect the existence of actual websites.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
Every time a lawsuit is dismissed, a lawyer's secretary breaks a nail.
What?
No, but Google can sue them. They even have evidence:
p os=1&query=google&language=&advanced=&urlonly=&wit hid=
http://www.kinderstart.com/cgi-bin/sqlsearch.cgi?
They have been removed from KinderStart's search engine, in violation of their first amendment right to free speech!
If you search google for "kinderstart" now, the website doesn't even show up in the first 10 pages of hits.
I thought the Reality Distortion Field only applied to Apple...
The last line in the article:
"All options are being explored. That's all that we are going to say at this point," Yu told news agency Reuters.
I imagine those options probably include "running away" and "hope to god they don't sue us".
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
IANAL. As long as Google automatically indexes all web pages and treats them the same, there is no problem. As soon as Google starts to manually prefer some pages and puts thought into creating a "new work" using the indexed pages it might become a copyright violation. Not sure about this though.
Hey, Boies, Schiller and Flexner, did you hear that? It's the sound of the Nazgûl sharpening their swords.
I smell a take-over in someone's future.
If I were Google, my damages would be just enough that it would become more financially prudent for KinderStart to just sell Google their IP.
Then Google could produce an uber-safe search option for over protective parents that would force all searches on a computer to a separate, sanitized, search url.
"Click here to engage 'Nanny-State' controls"
It'd be nice if that extended to the Google Desktop too. I'm sure Dad wouldn't like having Jr. discover the 'secret' porn folder.
In the example above, if the word "sql" is found, it is counted as a match. Also, if the word "oracle" is found, it is counted as a match as well. What the hell kind of kids look for 'sql' and 'oracle' but don't know about Google/Yahoo? The whole instruction page looks like it was written by a CS major, with no idea of his target audience.
Asking theoretically;
If a site is number 1 according to the algorithmic ranking engine, that says something about is place in world (or at list World Wide Web) opinion. Then the search company lowers the sites ranking standing for some reason (lets assume that this is because of the political views of the search company). Could the site make a claim that is was being slandered because it was not being ranked as the algorithmic ranking engine indicates?
I noticed two main things in that license text:
You can't remove any copyright, patent, or atribution notices. Kind of like the dreaded BSD advertising clause, in that if someone puts "Parts written by 1337 h4xx0rz" in the output of the program, you have to leave it there. Repeat ad nauseum for every contributor that jumps on the bandwagon, and things could get... unaesthetic.
They use almost the exact same patent control system as the GPLv3. If a program contains patented code, you're granted permission to use those patents to execute it. If you sue one of the patent holders for violations of your own patent, that permission is revoked. I think this is called the "please don't eat me, IBM!" clause. Seriously, though, this needs to be pointed out every single time some Microsoft shill attacks the GPLv3. You can dislike v3, but you can't really call it anti-business when the world's largest software vendor implemented parts of it in their own license.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
We should slaughter these parental groups like the Jedi.
*Sigh* Just goes to show how quickly real news is forgotten. What about the question of paternity for Anna Nicole Smith's child!? That still hasn't gone away you know!
I was listening to some back Podcasts of the Penn Jillette Radio Show and one episode had Drew Carey on, who was lamenting the 'latest news' cycle and how as a celebrity he's expected to do press vignettes and have an opinion on everything. He advocated the "I have no idea, I don't care about that" approach. It almost seems culturally abhorrent, doesn't it? Thinking about that some more shows how productized we've become as consumers of media, and for me anyway, is quite a warning flag to get back to what matters in life.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Maybe it's just early in the morning, but I read that phrase as "creating any new precedent or coleslaw."
Then I thought WTF? You mean the judge wanted to make salad out of KinderStart? Why not just give them their just desserts?
Find environmentally and socially responsible products on http://buy-right.net
... accused them of manipulating search results for political and religious reasons and skewing results in favor of companies that compensate Google financiallyUnder what theory of criminal or civil law can these accusations be made?
I fully expect Google to skew their search results in favor of companies that pay them to do so.
As long as Google does not represent otherwise, how can this possibly put Google in legal jeopardy? Can somebody cite a specific criminal statute or contractual agreement that Google would violate by charging money for placement?
"If we can't sue them and get the money all at once, we'll use google adsense and get it back 10 cents at a time!"
insight through the mind
by multiple tabs?
The United States of America: We do what we must because we can.
And like usuall. slashdot smells it!!!! sergey brins taintjuice
Actually, if you read those documents you'll see that while Google admits that most pages are machine indexed, they DO retain the option to manually mess with the system however they please. This ranges from 'tuning' their ranking system to manually removing sites if necessary. They do this mostly to attempt to at least control the link farm sites, which would render their service useless in short order if not controlled.
It's the same reason as to why they keep their system secret - if the farmers had access to their alogorithms they could be defeated fairly easily.
I don't read AC A human right
It's no worse than suing Ford to try to force them to sell you police cruisers while in the midst of a class action lawsuit alleging that said cruisers are unsafe to the point of criminal negligence.
I don't read AC A human right
Ironically, KinderStart's "news" section, KinderToday, has a design patterned after Slashdot, powered by Zope, and set up by a noobie.
"it's not about aptitude, it's the way you're viewed" - Galinda
This was a decision on the filed amended claims from a lawsuit decided last July in Google's favor. I'm rather impressed with the KinderStart attorney, Gregory Yu, but it takes two citations to show it. First, an Out-Law dot com article, after describing how the judge pummelled the lawsuit for the second time, decided to pound a bit upon Mr. Yu too:
Now return if you will to the time after a judgment had been entered last July, 2006 in Google's favor, but with a leave to amend, and we find Yu out pitching for potential clients:
Rush Limbaugh is a perfect real world example of an oxycontinmoron
Ferrero SpA (Italy) holds the international trademark "Kinder". Of course trademarking a common German word is an absurdity in itself, but for this one time I really wish that these linkspammers awoke a sleeping giant with their silly lawsuit, and will soon themselves be sued into oblivion.