The Gray Areas of Search-Engine Law

pasquafa writes "Here is a very smart article on the future of search engine legal controversies. Let's just say that the Google book search is just the start of the problems! Google thinks it's a newspaper and wants First Amendment protection to do whatever it pleases."

Comments

Google 'Transparency'

[ps236]

Whilst I agree mostly with Google wanting to keep their search engine ranking algorithms secret, I think it's too easy for people to get dumped at the bottom of the rankings without a clue why.

IMV, it'd be a good thing for someone to be able to pay a (non-trivial) amount of money (say $500) to Google and have them give general feedback on why your page is ranked low - eg 'too many repeated words' or 'irrelevant words' or 'too many crosslinks to bad sites' or whatever, rather than the current scenario of you just being left in the dark with a company which can't make any sales because Google's arbitrary ranking system has taken a dislike to your site.

Being able to pay to have Google re-evaluate your site earlier would be a good thing as well. (Not to be able to increase your ranking, but if you found a problem which you have since fixed).

JM2P

Re:Google 'Transparency'

[Red Pointy Tail]

Do Hollywood studios have the right to question Ebert on his methodology? No!- if you get a crappy review, too bad. All these is protected First Amendment free speech. I don't see why Google should be required by law to publish how they rank.

Some other forms of ranking (like university rankings) disclose their methodology because it gives them more credibility, not because the law requires them to do so. It is to their own interest to do so. On the other hand, Google doesn't - for trade secrecy, and to avoid it being gamed. All these in in TFA.

Right now Google basks in its credibility - that it is the most relevant search engine around, which they achieved without needing to disclose their methodology. We trust Google's 'review' enough to not bother how it is achieved.

Re:Google 'Transparency'

[owlnation]

It's not a bad idea, but really the best solution for everyone (including Google) is for Google to have serious competition. The rest will all take care of itself.

11 years after Google appears on the scene and yet NO challengers? Lame. Search is far, far from perfect, there is room for competition.

Re:Google 'Transparency'

[MikeBabcock]

That's a very apt comparison -- Google links to content and ranks it much like reviewers rank and list movie information. They provide a listing of content available and their own "personal" opinion on that content. If you really want to FIND the content, you could just type in the address or use a specialized index or directory and not depend on Google.

If you don't want ranked information in your searching, don't use a search engine. That said, I could see Google adding options like "sort by oldest entry / most recent / smallest / largest / most commonly clicked / most recently updated" in addition to their trade secret sorting method to get around complaints.

Re:Google 'Transparency'

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with SEO companies is that they often artificially inflate the actual value of sites in Google's result pages, thereby degrading the actual quality of Google's service. In any given industry/topic/category/whatever, if the top 20 sites got there because they were heavily "SEO"'d this presents a huge problem. Right now it's not too bad just yet, but since the whole SEO market/industry was coined and broke on to the scene, you can see Google's search quality degrade. Case in point, I did two searches this morning to research out a few things and was immediately bombarded by heavily "SEO"'d, rubbish sites that really had nothing to do with the keywords I was using. But because they were so heavily "SEO"'d Google thinks they are actually relevant to what I am looking for.

Other than writing clean code that search engines can spider and generating good content, there should be no need to hire SEO companies. In fact the SEO industry could be phased out if Google would go back to their roots and work on improving searching instead of trying to get into every industry known to man. Google needs competition.

Re:Google 'Transparency'

[greenbird]

It is quite common for companies to have a working business one day, and then the next, for some unknown reason their site is now listed on page 972 of Google's results, so their business goes down the chute.

This happens because Google change some arbitrary parameter

No, this happens because your business model is idiotic and doomed to failure if it relies on advertising controlled by and provided gratis by another company. Are you going to let Google view all your trade secrets that are critical to the success of your business?

Bad summary

[Sockatume]

"Google thinks it's a newspaper"? No, the article's discussing how the courts giving Google similar protections to newspapers would influence first amendment law in general, and its use on the internet in particular. It also discusses how if the courts oblige Google to divulge personal information in the same way as credit agencies, that will also affect them. It's a very interesting article, and it does suggest that Google has a world of legal tangles ahead of them, but surely somebody could've come up with a better summary than this?

Re:Bad summary

[MightyYar]

I think the article is making some of the same mistakes that it accuses the judge of making.

When Google goes to court defending itself when it comes to algorithms, it claims neutrality.

When Google goes to court defending itself when it comes to ads, it claims the right to editorialize.

The article makes this seem like a contradiction, but it's really not. Just because there are broad analogies to newspapers, media providers, common carriers, etc that apply to Google doesn't mean that the analogies need to be extended all the way across Google's product portfolio. The fact is that Google has both editorial content, and content that is not editorialized. All they are asking is for the editorial content to be treated as other (more traditional) editorial content is treated, and for the non-editorial content to be treated as other non-editorial content is treated.

It just so happens that the New York Times also has this - the overwhelming majority of their paper is editorial content, but they also publish lists derived from algorithms, such as the "New York Times Bestseller List". Someone could sue the New York Times because they don't like the way the list is compiled, thus snubbing their book and depriving it of a lot of attention - would they win? I don't think so.

Submitter Can't Read

[Anonymous Coward]

Here are the two key parts of the article about Google being treated like a newspaper:

If courts began to treat Google and its kin as Internet-age newspapers, he says, then regulating their content--from ads to search results--would be difficult.

One case last year in North Carolina, Langdon v. Google, leaned more toward the newspaper model, giving Google, Yahoo, and MSN free-speech protection to reject any ads they deemed objectionable.

So, the newspaper analogy has nothing to do with doing with "whatever it pleases", but rather stating that if this analogy is used by the courts, then regulation of its content is difficult, and Google has the rights to reject any ads it pleases.

The former seems quite true, and the later seems very reasonable to me.

Re:Submitter Can't Read

[McGregorMortis]

Precedents and analogies are great for making the law consistent, but they will only go so far. Once in a long while, it's necessary to create new models, which may then become the source for analogies in the future. Google is probably one of these. Google isn't precisely like a newspaper, nor is it precisely like a broadcaster, or a phone-book, or a credit-reporting agency, or a common-carrier. It's a new kind of thing, called a "search-engine."

Analogies may provide some context for deciding how to treat it in law, but trying to pound the square search-engine peg into any single one of the existing round analogies will only lead to irrational and unhelpful rules.

Over time, new case-law will develop, and someday lawyers will be arguing that their next new thing is analogous to a search-engine and subject to the same freedoms and restrictions. I think Google, by doing deliberately provocative things like the Book Search, is working to accelerate that process. That's a good thing, even if the Foot-shooters and Nose-cutters Association of America doesn't see it that way.

Leave money out of it...

[SanityInAnarchy]

At least right now, if we are to believe Google, PageRank is actually neutral. It's entirely based on actual content and/or popularity.

Allowing any additional service here for money seems like it'd be a step towards destroying that democratic ideal. Should someone who can afford to spend thousands on SEO, and an occasional $500 to Google, be given any advantage in normal (non-ad) search results over a community run, nonprofit (.org) website? I don't think we want to go there.

Re:Leave money out of it...

[greenbird]

All my 'ideal' would give would be a general explanation of why a search ranking is low, NOT an improvement in the search ranking.

If you know why a page is ranking low isn't that telling you how to improve your ranking? Isn't that just a little bit obvious? It allows anyone to game the system. Google's whole search business is built on giving what is at least perceived as neutral rankings based on relevance. If that perception is lost Google's credibility goes out the window with it and that would kill Google's search business.

kiss me to death, you sexy googlebot!

[flappedjack]

This annoys me: The legal balance that needs to be struck, he says, is that "a bad Google ranking can be the kiss of death for an online business. . . ."

First of all, any online business worth its salt shouldn't be relying on page rankings by Google, but should be buying ads from Google. Second, and much more importantly, Google doesn't owe these online businesses anything. Just because you hang a digital shingle out doesnt entitle you to success. If you enter a crowded niche or design a crappy site or otherwise piss off Google's bots, you deserve to fail.

Just like you would fail if you opened up the hundredth newspaper stand on your block with nothing to distinguish yourself, or never swept your store out, or forgot to advertise.

There's a huge sense of entitlement in this country, and its largely undeserved. It's far too easy to blame Google than to blame your own lousy business model.