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Google PageRank Suit Dismissed

Posted by Zonk on Fri Jul 14, 2006 11:31 AM
from the start-that dept.
Google The Internet Government The Courts Businesses News
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."
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Related Stories

[+] Suing Google Over Pagerank 427 comments
Yardboy wrote in to tell us about a story from Reuters describing a lawsuit by parental advice company Kinderstart.com against Google for 'charging it unfairly deprived the company of customers by downgrading its search-result ranking without reason or warning.' Kinderssart claims Google is responsible for 'a "cataclysmic" 70 percent fall in its audience -- and a resulting 80 percent decline in revenue.' I guess the courts will now decide: Can google taketh what they giveth?
[+] News: Google Antitrust Suit May Go Forward 151 comments
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."
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  • Wtf? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Poromenos1 (830658) on Friday July 14 2006, @11:34AM (#15719734) Homepage
    So they wanted Google to pay them because they sucked? If it was like that, then every sucky blog writer could sue them for cash.

    By the way, the "open for refiling" thing means that they can sue again if they thing Google MANUALLY changed the ranking, it's not really relevant to the case.

    • Re:Wtf? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Just Some Guy (3352) <kirk+slashdot@strauser.com> on Friday July 14 2006, @11:40AM (#15719792) Homepage Journal
      By the way, the "open for refiling" thing means that they can sue again if they thing Google MANUALLY changed the ranking, it's not really relevant to the case.

      Even then, though, why shouldn't they be free to manually change the ranking if they wanted to? It's their wholly-owned database, so is there any reason they should be kept from altering their own data?

      • "You suck", says google (Score:4, Insightful)

        by jfengel (409917) on Friday July 14 2006, @11:52AM (#15719935) Homepage Journal
        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's equivalent to saying, out loud and deliberately, "You suck". He's saying that if they do it manually, that could be evidence for malice, which is a requirement for a defamation suit. (At least according to Wikipedia; IANAL.)

        I suspect that the judge wanted to leave the idea open, since it hadn't been explored completely and therefore he couldn't absolutely rule it out, but I doubt it would fly. First they have to show that malice, and I can't help but think that they'll have a hard time with that. They'd need somebody with inside knowledge of the decision process; the judge has pretty much said that the lower number is not in and of itself evidence of malice.

        I'm sure they've got something they'll throw at this, so I doubt it's the last time we've heard of them. I suspect from here it'll be:

        kinderstart: we have evidence

        Judge: no, you don't. Go away. You suck.

        kinderstart: We sue you! We sue you!

        And the great cycle of life begins again.

        • 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's equivalent to saying, out loud and deliberately, "You suck".

          I suppose I can see that from a legal standpoint. Still, what's wrong with Google saying "they suck" when specifically asked? It seems like the difference between me standing on a corner shouting "kinderstart is worthless" and saying the same thing in response to someone asking me w

          • They'd have to show that Google is more than just saying "You suck". It's perfectly legal to express an opinion. Even if they can prove malice, their next step is to prove that the rank is a false statement of fact.

            So the judge is saying that he's also not completely closed to that idea, either. Google would probably say that a page rank is a matter of opinion. They'll respond that it's not; it's an objective number, and you artifically lowered ours. Google will say that the number is a product of an alg

        • 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's equivalent to saying, out loud and deliberately, "You suck". He's saying that if they do it manually, that could be evidence for malice, which is a requirement for a defamation suit. (At least according to Wikipedia; IANAL.)

          However, statements of opinion are protected under US law from being the target of defamation suits.

          • That's correct. Kinderstart would further have to show that a pagerank is some kind of objective fact, not just an opinion. I detailed this in a response to a sister posting to yours, but the gist is that Kinderstart could conceivably demonstrate that a low rank isn't merely "you suck" but "you are worthless", and they'd refute that statement by showing that there is useful information on their site. Google gave them a 0, and they'd argue that connotes "completely worthless", which is closer to an objecti

        • Re:"You suck", says google (Score:4, Interesting)

          by Punt3r (926089) * on Friday July 14 2006, @12:37PM (#15720268)
          Well... if google is saying:
          "In the opinion of google, KinderStart is not relevant to [some specific search criteria], i.e. KinderStart Sucks", that still shouldn't be defamation.

          If they were saying:
          "Google saw KinderStart suck on a phallus", (when in fact they did not see such an event), that's defamation.

          See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamation [wikipedia.org]
          "...publication of a false statement of fact, made with the requisite state of mind, that causes injury"

          I count on Google's page ranking system for _relevancy_, and there's no reason why manual intervention can't be part of that ranking system. If I don't like their methodology, I'll use some other search engine.

        • 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's equivalent to saying, out loud and deliberately, "You suck". He's saying that if they do it manually, that could be evidence for malice, which is a requirement for a defamation suit. (At least according to Wikipedia; IANAL.)

          THere is a good chance is was manually marked with a PR of 0 because that web site breaks just about every one of Google's

      • Re:Wtf? (Score:2, Insightful)

        by rgmoore (133276) *
        Even then, though, why shouldn't they be free to manually change the ranking if they wanted to?

        Because they claim that Page Rank is an automated, objective measure of a site's relevance. If it turns out that they're manually tweaking Page Ranks in a way that they're not telling people about, they might be guilty of false advertizing. I personally think that's a stretch, but then again, IANAL, so somebody who is might not agree.

        • Because they claim that Page Rank is an automated, objective measure of a site's relevance.

          A question, then: is it ever possible to incorporate a blacklist into an automated, objective measure and have it retain that status? Suppose that blacklist had very objective criteria: "people who are suing us". Would that pass the test?

          I'm not arguing one way or the other, just curious about what other people think of it.

      • Even then, though, why shouldn't they be free to manually change the ranking if they wanted to? It's their wholly-owned database, so is there any reason they should be kept from altering their own data?
        Yeah, while many companies do it, that's the risk you take when your business model relies on the referrals from a constantly-changing search engine.
        • I don't know why, but there seems to be the mindset these days of some new "Right to make a profit". A bit offtopic, but you see the same kind of attitude from the **AA and the like. I understand that you need to make sound business decisions, and making a profit is a business's entire purpose, but those with shakey business models always like to point the finger at everybody else, because they're not getting theirs and it can't be their fault!
        • And why shouldn't the New York Times be free to accuse KinderStart of molesting little boys?

          Don't be obtuse. There's a big difference between libel and stating that you don't like someone when asked about them.

    • Re:Wtf? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Aladrin (926209) on Friday July 14 2006, @11:52AM (#15719936)
      No, that's wrong. They have the chance to ammend. There is no restriction about 'manual editting'.

      FTA:

      Fogel specifically dismissed some of the claims against Google "with leave to amend," meaning that KinderStart can modify and refile the complaint.

      -snip-

      "The decision suggests that, if properly alleged, Google may be defaming a whole class of Web sites sacked with a '0' PageRank," he wrote in a statement. "If plaintiffs show Google manually tampered with even a single Web site's PageRank, Google's entire claim of 'objectivity' of search results and rankings could collapse."
      This only says that Google's defense may fail if the defendent can (this time) prove that Google manually modified anything. They couldn't prove it the first time, so I fail to see how they could with a second chance.

      • Rank and rating? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by phorm (591458) on Friday July 14 2006, @12:51PM (#15720366) Homepage Journal
        The decision suggests that, if properly alleged, Google may be defaming a whole class of Web sites sacked with a '0' PageRank,

        Isn't this something like MacDonalds sueing "Fine Cuisine Ratings Inc" because they're at the bottom of the charts?
      • This only says that Google's defense may fail if the defendent can (this time) prove that Google manually modified anything.


        Could someone explain, why i have a right to force an other company to give me a higher ranking than an other site?

        and why should google be forced to not manually edit their pagerank?
        • Yes they did delist BMW.de and I believe it was done manually. It was also documented that it was done for attempting to game the system. bmw.de had hired a company to do the the site that engaged in some dubious SRO practices - they listed used cars ~200 times in the meta content headers IIRC. For this group, they are nothing more than a crappy bunch of static links to other engines that let you do directed searches for early childhood education - oh, and lots of adds (2/3 - 3/4 of the page). I believe the
    • >So they wanted Google to pay them because they sucked? If it was like that, then every sucky blog writer could sue them for cash.

      Next stop: sue Billboard for not fitting your music track in their top 40, sue Oprah for not reviewing your book.

      Heck, I should sue Slashdot for my account being banned from moderating.

      • I should sue Slashdot for my account being banned from moderating.


        Looking at your homepage I actually wonder why you're allowed to have an account at all. I've never seen such an horrendous abomin... oh wait...

  • "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."

    Maybe he's just doing it for laughs when they replead. :)

  • Who do they think they are? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by stoanhart (876182) on Friday July 14 2006, @11:46AM (#15719862)
    Maybe they don't realise that Google's engine is theirs. It belongs to them, they made it. There is no right to be on the list at all. If google wants to, they can put anybody anywhere they want. They could put a page to the bottom manually just for not liking someone if they wanted to. This would hurt their credibility, and thus themselves, so they won't. But they can if they want to.

    If I was google, I would permanently ban them.

    • Google can deindex pages at will but they claim their Pagerank is computed automatically and if they were to modify it that could be construed as faking survey data in order to defame an opponent. You can skew your surveys in any way you like but you cannot alter the numbers directly and still claim it is a survey.

    • exactly. have you seen the site in question [kinderstart.com]? it's a total link farm SEO spam jobbie

      it's in google's (and the internet's interests) to whack that kind of tripe out of the indexes entirely

      • This is exactly what I suspected (though I don't care to visit the page). Google has a history of giving web sites that have no real content and artificially attempt to manipulate their ranking a 0 page rank. These places do nothing more than leech off of Google and it seems to me it would be in Google's business interest to give them a 0 page rank. What drives people to Google is the quality of the search results.

        If most searches turned up link farms, nobody would use Google. Google has every right to prot
    • If google wants to, they can put anybody anywhere they want.

      Depends on whether a court would find them to have monopolistic control over a vital resource or not. Because if a judge did, then Google might be on the hook for anti-trust behavior should they decide to pull any stunts.

      • Depends on whether a court would find them to have monopolistic control over a vital resource or not.

        I doubt that any court could find that. The resource is the data itself - the link crossover frequency, the traffic patterns, etc - which is free for anyone with a spider. You don't need Google to get that information, it's just a crapload easier to use them rather than do it yourself.
        In order to show Google as a monopoly, you would have to show that Google's possesion of the data prevents anyone else from

    • Maybe they don't realise that Google's engine is theirs. It belongs to them, they made it

      Indeed. Why counsel argued that Google is a state actor is beyond me. Google is a 100% private entity. It isn't a utility, it isn't any sort of state monopoly, it in no way assumes traditional governmental functions, etc. I haven't read any of the pleadings (and frankly don't care) but reading that makes me believe counsel for the plaintiffs are just barking up a tree.
      • Except that for the most part, the TAXPAYER paid for the copper and fiber to be installed in the first place, through granting of "easments" and tax breaks for "infrastructure improvements", not to mention the whole pesky group of regulations concerning "common carriers".

        If we, the taxpayers, hadn't paid for the phone networks in the first place, I would have absolutely no complaints about AT&T or SBC or whomever charging whatever they'd like for data crossing their wires.
      • The telcos are common carriers. They gave up certain rights to gain certain advantages. An ISP is free to charge discriminatory rates and to refuse to offer service to some customers. Unless you can claim that they have a monopoly, Google, and most other companies, have no legal obligation to be fair or nice.
      • Sure - and by this reasoning, the telco's and ISP's *can* charge variable rates for access to *their* networks. It belongs to them, they made it.

        ISPs and Telcos play by a different set of rules. They've been granted a whole bunch of special privleges by the government (I certainly didn't give them permission to put phone lines through my front yard, and I'm quite certain that the government isn't going to let another telco come along and install a whole second set). You'll notice the only ISPs that we car

        • I'm quite certain that the government isn't going to let another telco come along and install a whole second set

          I now have copper and fiber from three different companies running along the street in front of my house. Copper from two of them is running to the wall of my house, and the third company is forever begging me to get them in there, too. There are beating themselves silly on bundling service prices, and Verizon just sued the county to get them to speed up permission to let Verizon run more fiber
      • Yahoo, Microsoft, and Amazon have every right to do whatever they want with their product.

        The telcos are slightly different, in that a lot of their infrastructure is on public land.
  • "Put people who are suing us at the bottom of the search list," and then enable it by default.
  • This kind of thing is one of the main reasons the quality of life is going downhill in the US. Costs continue to go up with *no benefit* to anyone but the people who win stupid (nevermind frivolous) lawsuits. Oh, an dthe lawyers of course. When the money is going for thing sthat have no value, it screws the economy up for everyone.

    Add in the paranoia that stifles innovation, the loss of productivity, the screwed up lives, and it's just pathetic. Another place we should bring back the stocks. A judge sh

  • Reason? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Umbral Blot (737704) on Friday July 14 2006, @11:50AM (#15719910) Homepage
    The only way KinderStart's claims have a chance in hell is if they can claim that they were unfairly discriminated against, which I think is unlikely. However this possibility is why the judge let them re-file I suspect, contrary to the claims of other posters that "Google owns their search engine so they can do whatever they want with it". Even if you own something there are limitations under the law how you use it / run your establishment, and it is possible for Google to run afoul of them.
    • Since Google is a private, not Government entity, and not a monopoly, the only way I can see the plaintiff ever winning a suit is if Google hotlinks any search result for KinderStart to goat.cx ;-)

      Google can make them not exist at ALL (on Google search) ift they choose.
      It's Googles data, they compiled it.

      All KinderStart can really do is ask NOT to be searched/robots.txt etc.

      IANAL and all, but the above is "reasonable", and when SHTF, the law, even in the US, looks on "reasonable" heavily.
    • Can they? If organizations like the boyscouts of American can block gay members [hatecrime.org], why should anyone be able to force google's ranking or even inclusion of site site. Also, if you note the linked article, the press from the boyscouts incident has definately hit them financially... which is the way the public can really express their distaste for corporate methods, rather than individual companies wasting court time.

  • If at first you don't succeed... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by FractalZone (950570) on Friday July 14 2006, @11:52AM (#15719929) Homepage
    ...sue, and sue again!

    That is what the rabid anti-smokers and greedy trial lawyers did to the tobacco companies.

    There is a problem with a system where plaintiffs and keep flooding the courts with cases against any person or organization with deep pockets, hoping to strike it rich by eventually getting lucky in some particular venue. This is where a "loser pays" system would have some real merit.

    I am not saying that different people shouldn't be able to file separate (in time and/or location) lawsuits against a particualr party on essentially the same grounds, but that the number of such suits out to be finite, preferably small, before the burden of court costs and legal fees starts to shift over to plaintiffs.

    Yeah, that's very fuzzy, but the idea seems sound to me. Suing ought not to be a fishing expedition.
    • Of course you have to consider the flip side. If the loser must pay, the little guy may not bring a legitimate complaint to court for fear of going bankrupt with the court costs if he loses...
      • Of course you have to consider the flip side. If the loser must pay, the little guy may not bring a legitimate complaint to court for fear of going bankrupt with the court costs if he loses...

        That is an excellent point, and the reason I personally have trouble with the "loser pays" idea. I like the idea of discouraging frivolous suits, but not at the expense of discouraging legitimate ones; negligence and malfeasance should be punished. What I'd like to do is set up a panel to review cases that are di

      • > Of course you have to consider the flip side.
        > If the loser must pay, the little guy may not bring a legitimate complaint
        > to court for fear of going bankrupt with the court costs if he loses...

        Strawman.

        In a reasonable "loser pays" system, the amount that the loser pays is set by the court, usually taking into consideration the loser's financial abilities, whether the lawsuit was malicious, etc.

  • I don't know how much this legal action has cost them, but it's gotten Kinderstart more recognition their Google PageRank ever did, even when it was healty. There's no such thing as bad publicity, which this whole debacle has gotten them in spades.

    But, of course, if you don't offer a quality good or service, mere publicity won't result in lasting traffic and revenue. And since Kinderstart is nothing but a linkfarm, I don't think they'll benefit much in the long run. A Slashmob isn't really their demographic, anyway.

  • Blacklist (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Sir_Lewk (967686) <sirlewkNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Friday July 14 2006, @12:11PM (#15720080)
    Perhaps Google should blacklist them for attempting to manipulate their search results, albeit not through the usual means but rather the courts.

  • Damn, this is a scary. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 14 2006, @12:13PM (#15720095)
    I'm scared by the fact that the case made it this far.

    Let's say I put up a little web site with FREE CONTENT, and then someone sues me because it doesn't do or say exactly what they wanted.

    In what twisted, fucked-up legal theory does the idea of Google providing a free service suddenly turn into a LEGAL OBLIGATION to provide that service exactly the same way forever?

    The fact that this idea was even entertained is horrific. This subjects many great free things (Wikipedia, blogs, etc.) to direct legal jeopardy -- or at least burdens them with the expense of hiring a lawyer to defend against these kind of garbage suits.

    In the past few years, it's become clear that we're going down a very nasty road. At this rate, I wouldn't be surprised to see someone sue the FSF because GNU/Linux does not implement some particular feature, or if it has some bug in it.

    • Re:Damn, this is a scary. (Score:4, Funny)

      by Herkum01 (592704) on Friday July 14 2006, @01:51PM (#15720792)

      Also in the news today, the GNAA is suing the web site Slashdot. From their lawyer, "Yo man! Everytime we post some'tin on their page, it is always getting marked down yo... They cannot being don't that s**t to a n*****, it just ain't right!"

      Taco, as a representative for Slashdot was quoted with a response... "WTF?!"

  • Small profit is still a profit. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by rowama (907743) on Friday July 14 2006, @12:15PM (#15720114)
    ...the company's revenue from advertisements through Google's AdSense syndication program fell by more than 80 percent...

    I'm curious if they are still making a profit on AdSense syndication. If so, then the lawsuit seems even more ridiculous to me. It's like saying, "I could be making $10,000 off of you, but because I can't maintain an interesting website, I'm only making $2,000. I think I'll sue you for the rest."

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